ReligiousLeftLaw.com

Is there a Difference Between the Russians and American Business Corporations?

What's wrong with the Russians using speech to influence our elections? Citizens United argued that limits on the speech of business corporations interfered with “the open marketplace of ideas protected by the First Amendment.” The Court said that “The fact that a corporation, or any other speaker, is willing to spend money to try to persuade voters presupposes that the people have the ultimate influence over elected officials.” (emphasis added). So, if we trust the marketplace of ideas, shouldn’t the Court protect the speech of the Russian government or Russian corporations. President Obama in his 2010 State of the Union Address worried that the Court would go that far: "With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections." You will recall that Justice Alito muttered that it was not true. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012802893.html

In fact, the Court left open the issue of foreign corporations. But the Court seems trapped by its own reasoning. The reason why we resist the Russians using speech through dummy corporations to influence the outcome of our elections is that the Russians are not trying to advance the public interest of the United States. The Russians seek to advance Russian interests, and the Russians are not part of the electorate in the United States.

But this exposes the bankruptcy of Citizens United. We rightly do not trust the marketplace to get it right with Russian messages. And that leads to a crucial question. What is the difference between the Russians and non-media business corporations? The Russians seek to promote Russian interests, not the public interest. So too, business corporations seek to promote their profits without regard to whether that promotion advances the public interest, and business corporations are not members of the electorate.

Of course, many citizens seek to advance their own interests, rather than the public interest, but foreign governments and business corporations are structured to promote their own interests. President Obama was right. The Court overturned a century of law that has opened the floodgates for special interests. The problem with special interests, like the Russians, is that they are influential and they act without regard to the common good.

The Unavoidability of Anthropomorphism (if not anthropocentrism)

All descriptive, explanatory, and normative language is, in one (I hope) nontrivial sense, “anthropocentric.” Indeed, language itself is anthropomorphic by definition, even if it need not be strongly anthropocentric (as in concepts of impartiality, objectivity and truth, for example, or in scientific endeavors to understand the natural world). Poets, philosophers and scientists, as well as the rest of us, depend on human language to communicate, and thus we are necessarily implicated in anthropomorphic and often anthropocentric expressions, conceptualizations, and characterizations or, at the very least, anthropomorphic presuppositions, assumptions and presumptions. Even the “deepest” ecologist and the most devoted Daoist cannot free themselves from, or avoid the constraints of, anthropomorphism. Consider, for instance, the latter: although the Daodejing of the Daoist—one of the most exquisitely profound expressions of classical Chinese philosophy—includes many (evocative) suggestions or “imperatives” to follow (literally and figuratively) the course or order of nature, it too is unavoidably anthropomorphic. In conceding this, we need not deny the text’s desire, wish, or quest to transcend, as it were, an anthropomorphic perspective.¹ To keep with our example, the Daoist is insistent that the nature of Dao cannot be put into words, that all “names” are perspectival and limiting … and often misleading. And yet the Daoist is perforce compelled to speak about the Dao, even if enigmatically, aphoristically, and metaphorically, while simultaneously attempting to have us bear in mind the limitations of language and conceptualization, much like, if not identical to, the motivating rationale of poetry, which at once exploits the possibilities and limitations of linguistic expression.

Perhaps the words and formulations of the non-theistic mystic come as close as is humanly possible to avoiding conceptual anthropomorphism when endeavoring to “point to” or characterize as best as possible, the nature of mystical (i.e., the heights of spiritual) experience.² And one might plausibly argue that “the misanthrope,” insofar as he can be truly systematic or consistent (e.g., avoiding all-too-human behavioral and emotional dispositions or following through on the behavioral consequences or conclusions of such thoughts and sentiment) in his dislike of or contempt for human beings, can more or less steer clear of all species of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. Finally, nothing said here denies our ability and frequent need to distinguish crude from sophisticated anthropomorphism or weak from strong anthropocentrism.

The following passage from Hilary Putnam’s chapter, “Values, facts and cognition” in his book Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge University Press, 1981), well illustrates our contention regarding the ubiquity of the anthropomorphic bias if you will, or what I prefer to call the unavoidability of anthropomorphism:

“[F]act, (or truth) and rationality are interdependent notions. A fact is something that it is rational to believe, or, more precisely, the notion of a fact (or a true statement) is an idealization of the notion of a statement that it is rational to believe. [….] [B]eing rational involves having criteria of relevance as well as criteria of rational acceptability, and…all of our values are involved in our criteria of relevance. The decision that a picture of the world is true (or true by our present lights, or “as true as anything is”) and answers the relevant questions (as well as we are able to answer them) rests on and reveals our total system of value commitments. A being with no values would have no facts either. The way in which criteria of relevance involves values, at least indirectly, may be seen by examining the simplest statement. Take the sentence ‘The cat is on the mat.’ If someone actually makes this judgment in a particular context, then he employs conceptual resources—the notions ‘cat,’ ‘on,’ and ‘mat’—which are provided by a particular culture, and whose presence and ubiquity reveal something about the interests and values of that culture, and of almost every culture. We have the category ‘cat’ because we regard the division of the world into animals and non-animals as significant, and we are further interested in what species a given animal belongs to. It is relevant that there is a cat on the mat and not just a thing. We have the category ‘mat’ because we regard the division of inanimate things into artifacts and non-artifacts as significant, and we are further interested in the purpose and nature a particular artifact has. It is relevant that it is a mat that the cat is on and just something. We have the category ‘on’ because we are interested in spatial relations. Notice what we have: we took the most banal statement imaginable, ‘the cat is on the mat,’ and we found that the presuppositions which make this statement a relevant one in certain contexts include the significance of the categories animate/inanimate, purpose, and space. To a mind with no disposition to regard these as relevant categories, ‘the cat is on the mat’ would be as irrational as ‘the number of hexagonal objects in this room is 76’ would be, uttered in the middle of a tête-à-tête between young lovers. Not only do very general facts about our value system show themselves in our categories (artifacts, species name, term for a spatial relation) but, our more specific values (for example, sensitivity and compassion), also show up in the use we make of specific classificatory words (‘considerate,’ ‘selfish’). To repeat, our criteria of relevance rest on and reveal our whole system of values.”—Hilary Putnam

Notes

1. Cf. the well-known passage from chapter 5: “Heaven and earth are not humane, they regard the ten thousand things as straw dogs [As Hans-Georg Moeller explains, ‘straw dogs … were highly revered elements in sacrificial rituals, but after the ritual they lost all their meaning and were simply discarded.’]. The sage is not humane. He regards all the people as straw dogs.”
2. See, for example, the argument(s) on behalf of “pure consciousness events” (PCE) in Robert K.C. Forman, ed., The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1990).

The Wall Street Journal Steps into Outer Darkness

I have subscribed to the Wall Street Journal (along with the New York Times) off and on for many years. Its excellent news pages have been accompanied by conservative editorials and often marred by kooky or mean-spirited contributions to the editorial pages. Nonetheless, even in the editorial pages, I have often enjoyed the writing of people like Peggy Noonan.

Nonetheless, tomorrow I will cancel my subscription to the Wall Street Journal. A few days ago, the Journal suggested that Clinton, the Democratic Party, and FBI colluded with the Russians. It demanded an investigation and called for the resignation of Robert Mueller. For a summary, see http://www.businessinsider.com/wsj-mueller-trump-russia-dossier-collusion-clinton-2017-10

I will cancel not just because the Journal has crossed over into Fox, Limbaugh, Breitbart territory and not just because the Journal can no longer be thought of as a serious newspaper. By joining the liars and lunatics, the Journal in calling for Mueller’s resignation has abandoned the rule of law for undisclosed reasons. Perhaps this flight from sane political discourse was dictated by the owner. I don’t know, but it is a sad example of the deterioration of our political system. Even before Trump was running for office, Seana Shiffrin was warning in her book Speech Matters that lies undermine trust, and democracy cannot properly function without trust. She was right then and all too right now.

The anarchist, socialist and bohemian childhood milieu of the inimitable polymath, Kenneth Rexroth (December 22, 1905 – June 6, 1982)

I rarely read biographies (for several reasons not worthy of your time), but I’ve just begun Linda Hamalian’s A Life of Kenneth Rexroth (W.W. Norton & Co., 1991), largely favorable reviews of which I recall when it first appeared. Just a few pages in and so far, so good. It’s little gems like this which will hold my attention:

“In their Bohemian moods, the Rexroths [Kenneth’s parents, Charles and Delia] entertained circus performers and burlesque artists, but with their family background of political activism, they also sought out the company of social reformers. By Rexroth’s account, Charles’s father [Kenneth’s grandfather], George, was a descendant from the Schwenkfeldians, the German Pietist sect that originated in the sixteenth century. George Rexroth, a plumber, voted the Socialist ticket and called himself an anarchist. He was apparently a friend of Eugene Debs, founder of the Social Democratic Party [only one of many notable accomplishments], who used to visit him when he wanted to relax: ‘they used to sit on the front porch of my grandfather’s house, with their socked feet on the railing, drinking whiskey.’ At Sandusky, Kenneth’s maternal great-grandfather ran a trading post which served as a last stop on the Underground Railroad. His great-grandmother, who lived until she was ninety-five, was a Socialist and a feminist who defied social convention by retaining her own name when she married, and smoking little cigars or china pipes. She entertained Rexroth with stories about his family that sometimes contained more fiction than fact, like the one that he had Tecumseh blood. (Rexroth continued to believe that his paternal great-grandparents were part Indian, possibly Iroquois). By the time the Rexroths arrived in Battle Creek, it had become a natural stopping point for lecturers from black and women’s rights groups. The great civil rights pioneer Sojourner Truth had lived there for thirty years, until her death in 1883. The Rexroths had the pleasure of extending hospitality to such distinguished activists as Mrs. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell. Thus in his early years Kenneth breathed an atmosphere of political dissent.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

*           *           *

More Hamalian on Kenneth Rexroth and his childhood:

“Disaster struck the Rexroth family in 1915, causing them to move “from their Garrison Street mansion to a furnished three-room apartment in a building infested with rodents and roaches. Reduced to pawning or selling their possession, the Rexroths had little more than their clothes to bring with them. [….] Under these cramped physical and financial conditions, daily squabbles inevitably erupted and the emotional climate became unbearable. Charles and Delia once more faced the inevitability of separation. Charles responded to the crisis by drinking until an attack of delirium tremens landed him in the Keely-Cure Sanatorium.

Charles got a grip on himself and resumed his career as a traveling salesman in the wholesale drug and liquor business. [….] Frequently, Kenneth and Delia accompanied Charles on his business trips around Michigan—his territory had been drastically modified. [….] But there were exciting trips to New York City, where they stayed either at the Brevoort or the Lafayette, both popular with writers, artists, and journalists living in or passing through Greenwich Village. The Lafayette edged out the Brevoort as ‘the unrivalled meeting place of high bohemia,’ reaching its peak of popularity somewhat later in the twenties. Charles and Delia seemed to prefer this ambiance to all others, and they would drag their nine-year old son to these two hotel cafés, and places like Polly’s Restaurant on MacDougal Street, owned by Paula Holliday. There the anarchist Hippolyte Havel, who served as cook and waiter, would address the people who ate his food as ‘bourgeois pigs.’ Emma Goldman was an habitué of Polly’s, as well as of the Brevoort and the Lafayette, and Kenneth once overheard a debate she started over fellow anarchist and lover Alexander Berkman, who in 1892 attempted to assassinate the industrialist Henry Clark Frick during the Homestead Strike against Carnegie Steel in Pittsburgh. From his father, Kenneth learned about Berkman’s fourteen years in prison; many years later he wrote an introduction for a new edition of Berkman’s Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.”

In a note, Hamalian informs us that the “book was not published until 1970, by Frontier Press. Rexroth believed that Berkman was ‘a typical political assassin, naïve, isolated, and fanatical,’ and that his prison years ‘turned him into a man of exceptional maturity and wisdom,’ his memoirs ‘the record of a personal reformation quite the opposite of that expected by the prison system.’”

*           *           *

Kenneth Rexroth’s early yet deep intimations of “virtue epistemology:”

Kenneth Rexroth had a rather peripatetic upbringing but neither his formal nor informal educational experiences noticeably suffered as a consequence. This passage from Hamalian’s book speaks to one instance of the latter experience: his mother seriously ill and bedridden, indeed, not far from death,

“Kenneth was at her side constantly. Delia did not make him go off to school. Instead, she read to him from books on history, the natural sciences, and the lives of great artists and writers. She felt a great urgency to instill in her eleven-year-old son a sense of independence, and implanted in him the idea of the moral value of knowledge, or as Rexroth would later express it, that epistemology is moral. She wanted him to be a writer and an artist, but urged him to make sure, above all else, to think things through for himself. He listened well, caught up by the powerful truth of her advice, and perhaps by a boy’s love for his dying mother.”

Thus, in addition to learning the abiding—and Godwinian-like*—value of thinking for oneself, it seems Rexroth had an early and deeply instilled existential sense of the value of what today is called “virtue epistemology,” a sub-branch of epistemology proper in the profession of contemporary philosophy, a specialized domain that had its formal beginnings in the 1980s (although its philosophical precursors are found here and there throughout the history of philosophy, east and west).

* Hence the centrality of his rational doctrine of “private judgment” in tandem with his belief (shared with Condorcet) in “perfectibility.” 

I hope to post more from Hamalian’s biography at a later date.

Wedding Cake Brief

Wedding Cake Brief
I filed a brief in the United States Supreme Court yesterday in the wedding cake case on behalf of Mike Dorf, Seana Shiffrin, and myself. We address the free speech issue in the case, but not the religion issue.
We argue that wedding cakes are not speech within the meaning of the First Amendment, at least in the absence of a specifically articulated message on the cake. Although Jack Phillips, the baker in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, has religious objections to producing wedding cakes for same-sex weddings, a wedding cake does not communicate that a wedding should be celebrated, and a wedding cake has no theology. It does not carry a message of divine approval. It carries no message that contradicts the baker’s ideology.
The baker maintains that his cakes are art, but no court has ever held that wedding cakes are the kind of art that is protected under the First Amendment. To be sure, it would be the rare baker who did not decorate a wedding cake. Many would maintain that decoration involves artistic ability, so, in a loose sense, they are artists. But that does not mean they produce art within the meaning of the First Amendment. 
It would be perilous for the courts to attempt to discern, cake by cake, which is worthy of the label “art.” Judges are not art critics. They do not make ad hoc judgments whether some music is art and some is not. Instead, courts have made the categorical judgment that music is speech within the meaning of the First Amendment. Lower courts should not be sent down a road in which they determine what is or is not art among bakers, florists, or jewelers. Although some long-recognized art forms count as expression within the meaning of the First Amendment even absent an articulate message, unless boundless forms of human activity are to count as art, a line must be drawn narrowly. Music falls within the scope of the First Amendment; the products of jewelers, florists, chefs, and bakeries do not, even though they involve skill and aesthetic judgment.
Even if wedding cakes are “speech,” we argue that compelling a baker to produce such speech for a same-sex wedding in violation of the Colorado anti-discrimination statute does not violate the principles of free speech under existing law. It would be quite unwise to change those principles. The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is directed at discriminatory conduct whether or not it takes the form of speech. It applies to the hair dresser, the dress designer, the florist, the jeweler, the interior decorator, the chef, the bartender, the candlestick maker, and the baker. All make artistic choices that make a wedding attractive. To stretch the First Amendment to cover this wide range of goods and services and to disrupt established precedent would threaten civil rights law not only with respect to sexual orientation, but also with respect to race, religion, and gender.

Here is a link to the brief: https://www.aclu.org/…/charlie-craig-and-david-mullins-v-ma…
For links to the other documents in the case, go to https://www.aclu.org/…/charlie-craig-and-david-mullins-v-ma…

Radical Catholicism or Catholic Radicalism: a bibliography

                       

My latest bibliography is on Radical Catholicism (The Catholic Worker Movement, Liberation Theology...). It is available at either Academia.edu or ResearchGate. Here is the introduction:

Some of these titles are outside Catholicism proper although the forms of Protestant Christianity they exemplify have much in common (as recognized by the respective members of the concerned parties) with Catholic radicalism. I included a few of these works if only to avoid the impression that Catholicism has a monopoly on this Christian mode of religious radicalism! Like most of my bibliographies, this one has two principal constraints: books, in English. And it is intended to be representative (thus not exhaustive) of the literature. [And no, I am not a sales representative for Orbis Books.]

You should be able to access all of my bibliographies, listed below, at these two sites.     

1. Africana & African American Philosophy
2. After Slavery & Reconstruction: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights, Freedom, and Equality in the U.S.
3. B.R. Ambedkar
4. American Indian Law (this list goes considerably beyond ‘law’)
5. Analogy & Metaphor
6. Anarchism: Philosophy & Praxis
7. Animal Ethics, Rights, and Law
8. The Arab World: Modern & Post-Modern
9. The Bedouin
10. Beyond Capitalist Agribusiness: Toward Agroecology & Food Justice
11. Beyond Capitalist-Attenuated Time: Freedom, Leisure, and Self-Realization
12. Bioethics
13. Biological Psychiatry, Sullied Psychology and Pharmaceutical Reason
14. Blacks and Food Justice: A Guide to Resources
15. Blacks on the (Radical) Left
16. The Black Panther Party
17. On Boxing — Sweet Science & Brutal Agon
18. Buddhism
19. Buddhism & Psychoanalysis
20. Capital Punishment
21. César Chávez & the United Farm Workers
22. Christianity
23. Classical Chinese Worldviews
24. Comparative Law
25. Conflict Resolution and Nonviolence
26. Constitutionalism
27. The Corporatization of Higher Education
28. Criminal Law
29. Death & Dying
30. Democratic Theory
31. Detroit: Labor & Industrialization, Race & Politics, Rebellion & Resurgence — A Select Bibliography
32. Dreams and Dreaming
33. Ecological & Environmental Politics, Philosophies, and Worldviews
34. Emotions
35. Ethical Perspectives on Science & Technology
36. Frantz Fanon—A Basic Reading Guide
37. Freudian Psychology
38. The Life, Work, & Legacy of Mohandas K. Gandhi
39. Global Distributive Justice
40. The Great Depression & The New Deal
41. Health: Law, Ethics & Social Justice
42. Hinduism
43. The History, Theory & Praxis of the Left in the 1960s
44. Human Rights
45. Indic (or Indian) Philosophy
46. International Criminal Law
47. International Law
48. Modern Iran
49. Islam & Muslims in the United States
50. Islamic Studies
51. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
52. The Jain Tradition
53. Judaism
54. Law and Literature
55. Toward an Understanding of Liberalism
56. Marxism
57. Marxism (or ‘the Left’), Art & Aesthetics
58. Marxism and Freudian Psychology
59. Mass Media
60. Nonviolent Resistance in the Middle East (with an emphasis on the Palestinian struggle)
61. Nuclear Weapons
62. Pan-Africanism, Black Internationalism, & Black Cosmopolitanism
63. Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory
64. Philosophy, Psychology, & Methodology for the Social Sciences
65. Philosophy & Racism
66. Punishment and Prison
67. Radical Catholicism (The Catholic Worker Movement, Liberation Theology…)
68. Science and Religion
69. Science and Technology
70. Slavery
71. Social Security & the Welfare State
72. South African Liberation Struggles
73. Sullied (Natural & Social) Sciences
74. Terrorism
75. Torture: moral, legal, and political dimensions
76. Transitional Justice
77. Utopian Imagination, Thought & Praxis
78. The Varna & Caste System in India
79. Vietnam War
80. Violent Conflict & the Laws of War
81. Women as Intellectuals in the European Enlightenment
82. Workers, the World of Work, and Labor Law
83. Zionist Ideologies                                                      

The Palestinian Struggle for Self-Determination & the Right of Resistance to Occupation

There are only two ways. The one currently pursued by the Israeli government, in all its agencies, is the path of violent, stubborn coercion. The extreme nationalists of the Israeli right have a vision that is easy enough to comprehend; it is embodied daily in a thousand acts and signs. They want to crush Palestinian nationalism as a historical force, and the Palestinian people as a collective; to hem the Palestinians within isolated enclaves and to cut off any hope of their sustaining a national existence with a basis on the ground; and, in the course of achieving this, to annex as much land (with as few living Palestinians attached to it) as possible. In short, this is an uncompromising vision of domination and control. The right, clinging to all the violent memories of the past, fears the Palestinians and inhabits a mental universe in which the only safe option is to attack, punish, destroy, incarcerate, and contain. Such people perceive any alternative approach or action, based on compromise and negotiation and on acknowledging one’s own responsibility for what has happened, as an existential threat. Thus they are prepared to live indefinitely with ongoing occupation, in one form or another; they are also willing to make occasional, relatively minor sacrifices, like the withdrawal from Gaza, in order to ensure the continuation of the main colonial enterprise. A regime of total control, constant application of brute force, the rape of the land—all these are acceptable, indeed necessary, if the Jews are to survive.—David Shulman, Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine (University of Chicago Press, 2007)

*           *           *

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I’ll say it: a nation lacks the political, let alone moral, authority to ask or demand (as part of one or more conditions, say, for negotiations or ending its aggression or repressive forms policing or ‘security’) groups or organizations struggling for collective self-determination to renounce all use of violence to achieve their ends—particularly if that denial of self-determination is, as is often the case, part and parcel of outside and more powerful parties systematically failing to recognize their human rights: civil, political, social, cultural, and economic—all the more so if the demanding state itself achieved collective self-determination through violent means (war, rebellion, revolution, terrorism, what have you) or typically resorts to violence when conventional and nonviolent political methods (diplomacy, negotiation, sanctions, etc.) fail or, and often relatedly, employs state violence to assert its political will on other nations (for whatever reason: ideological domination, regime change, resource exploitation, a more congenial economic environment …). Conceding this does not amount to an implicit or roundabout justification or warrant for the particular means of violence such groups or organizations may choose in their struggle (although it’s not difficult to understand why those who are frequently subject to state terror often defend themselves with terrorist means readily available to them) for which they are morally responsible, hence accountable (consider the Sorelian-like celebration of violence or the romantic militarism that finds easy justification for acts of terrorism).¹ Indeed, it may be the case that the humanitarian-inspired constraints of just war theory (especially jus in bello) should, more or less, be applied to groups like the Palestinians in their struggle for collective self-determination (this applies as well to those seeking to secede from existing states, which I believe, with Allen Buchanan, should be understood only as a remedial right, a ‘last resort response to serious injustices’).²

Speaking of the Palestinians, it’s useful to remind ourselves that, under international law, in the words of Richard Falk, “Palestinian resistance to occupation is a legally protected right,” one that arises in the first instance from two documents: the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples and the Fourth Geneva Convention and its subsequent protocols. As argued in a couple of articles Falk co-authored with Burns Weston,

“Israel’s failures as a belligerent occupant to abide by international law amount[s] to a fundamental denial of the Palestinian right of self-determination, and more generally of respect for the framework of belligerent occupation—therefore giving rise to a Palestinian right of resistance.”

In short, Palestinians have an inalienable moral and legal right to resist an illegal and violent military occupation.

For its part, Israel has reacted to all manner of Palestinian resistance, be it violent or non-violent, with routine reliance on “excessive and disproportionate use of lethal force, including the apparent targeting of civilians and children [as well as torture and various forms of “collective punishment].” Both the creation of “facts on the ground” (e.g., ever-expanding settlements) “and the use of such force … constitute repeated and fundamental violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, violations that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Notes

1. This called to mind the following from C.A.J. Coady: “Those who enthuse about violence and war with a focus only on the virtues it may promote are like people who recognise the bonds of loyalty and honour amongst certain sorts of thieves and take this as a ground for advocating theft.” After William James, Coady reminds us, the “activities and contexts in which the virtues and values [e.g. the fight for justice, enthusiasm for action, striving and struggle, courage, perseverance against adversity, comradeship, overcoming of obstacles, solidarity, and self-sacrifice] that can be exhibited in war have a chance to be less damagingly embodied [indeed, Gandhi’s theory and praxis of nonviolence provides a compelling exemplification of this possibility].” Lest the wrong inference be made, I’m well aware that governments or government agencies often resort to terrorist methods for political purposes and, given the State’s monopoly (de jure or de facto) on the means of violence, among other reasons, the horrific consequences of its terrorist acts are far exceed (to date at least) those used by non-state political actors: guerrilla groups, rebels, revolutionaries, nationalists, etc., as any student of the indiscriminate bombing of civilians during the twentieth-century can attest.
2. Please see ch. 8, “Self-Determination and Secession,” in his book, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (Oxford University Press, 2004): 331-400. Buchanan combines his Remedial Right Only Theory with a “supportive stance toward forms of self-determination within the state,” in other words, various forms of intrastate autonomy. On this, see ch. 9, “Intrastate Autonomy:” 401-424.

References and Further Reading:

• Barghouti, Omar. BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions—The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2011.
• Bröning, Michael. The Politics of Change in Palestine: State-Building and Non-Violent Resistance. London: Pluto Press, 2011.
• Buchanan Allen. Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Coady, C.A.J. Morality and Political Violence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Cypel, Sylvain. Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse. New York: Other Press, 2006.
• Falk, Richard. “International Law and Palestinian Resistance,” in Joel Beinin and Rebecca L. Stein, eds. The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006: 315-323.
• Falk, Richard and Burns H. Weston, “The Relevance of International Law to Palestinian Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: In Legal Defense of the Intifada,” Harvard International Law Journal 32, no. 1 (1991): 129-150. See also Falk and Weston, “The Israeli-Occupied Territories, International Law and the Boundaries of Scholarly Discourse: A Reply to Michael Curtis," Harvard International Law Journal 33, no.1 (1992): 191-204.
• Lim, Audrea, ed. The Case for Sanctions Against Israel. London: Verso, 2012.
• Makdisi, Saree. Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008.
• Pappe, Ilan. The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge. London: Verso, 2014.
• Shenhav, Yehouda. Beyond the Two State Solution: A Jewish Political Essay. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012.
• Tilley, Virginia. Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Territories. London: Pluto Press, 2012.

Further Research:

• My bibliography for the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” is here.
• A compilation on for “Nonviolent Resistance in the Middle East (with an emphasis on the Palestinian struggle),” is here.
• A transdisciplinary bibliography on the “Moral, Legal, and Political Dimensions of Violent Conflict & the Laws of War,” is here.
• A bibliography for “Zionist ideologies” is here.

Anarchism: Philosophy & Praxis — a bibliography

The first draft of my latest—82^nd—bibliography, “Anarchism: Philosophy & Praxis,” is now available. The ads can be avoided if you click on the download for the pdf version in the upper right hand corner of the page. I have also posted it at ResearchGate which, for now at least, is not plastered with advertising.

                                                                                           

The generalized or universal aesthetic appreciation of religious art

As I‘ve likely mentioned in this space before (when you reach my age, confidence in one’s memory is evanescent), in our class at city college on “comparative world religions” I suggested at the beginning of the term that my students look up images of the art in the religions we were studying as a secure port of entry into these worldviews because this art is relatively free of the sorts of things found in religious doctrines and history that rub (at least some) people the wrong way (their biases, prejudices, and conclusions in this regard may be owing to inadequate knowledge, mistaken beliefs, or simply closed-mindedness, but in the course of a semester it’s not likely such obstacles will be overcome). As our class was in the philosophy department, and we had so much material to cover (seven religious worldviews!), we did not have time to look, literally and figuratively, at artistic production within these worldviews (which invariably evidenced cross-cultural borrowing, ‘stealing,’ and influence, in other words, ‘appropriation’ such that it was assumed that people within these traditions did not possess anything remotely like ownership rights to what today we call their ‘art’). Throughout the semester I would occasionally mention various examples of this artistic heritage to remind them (experience taught me that anything said in the first few weeks of classes was soon forgotten) of my suggestion (e.g., Eastern Orthodox iconography, Tibetan Buddhist thangkas, Islamic calligraphy and mosques …) but I always lamented the fact that we could not even cursorily examine such material. However, on those (precious few) rainy days when I could (or would) not ride my bike to school, I brought books of religious art from home for their viewing pleasure. Of course this just provided the barest—and second-hand—“taste” of such art, albeit with the pedagogue’s hope of whetting their aesthetic appetite.

All of which brings us to Kenan Malik’s latest post on the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul (as Malik notes, ‘Sinan’s masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque’ in Edirne, Turkey).

Transformational Marriage: How to End the Culture Wars Over Same-Sex Marriage

That's the title of a new paper by Rob Kar, Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Illinois.  The paper is Rob's contribution to a volume edited by Robin Fretwell Wilson:   The Contested Place of Religion in Family Life (Cambridge University Press 2018).  Rob is eager for critical feedback on the paper:   [email protected].   The paper is available here.

The abstract:

Recent developments toward the legalization of same-sex marriage in the West are often viewed as a triumph for secularism in a religious-secular culture war. That assumption foments ongoing division and hostility between some committed religious observers and some LGBT persons and their supporters.

The assumption is also wrong. The recent legalization of same-sex marriage in the West has underappreciated religious and spiritual causes and potential. It is the partial result of the historical emergence of a love-based social institution of marriage in the West. These developments, which began in the 17th to 18th centuries, further allowed for the emergence of what this article calls "transformational marriage". Given the development of transformational marriage, there are now weighty reasons -- both religious and secular -- to support these marriages among anyone who chooses to enter into them. Debates over same-sex marriage should be removed from the contemporary religious-secular culture wars.

To show this, this chapter offers a blend of religious, scriptural, moral, secular and psychological arguments, which provide a basis for previously opposing camps to reach an "overlapping consensus" on the value of transformative marriage for all people. An overlapping consensus is the polar opposite of a religious-secular culture war: it is a consensus that can be affirmed, for different reasons, by the opposing religious, philosophical and moral doctrines likely to thrive over generations in a more or less just constitutional democracy. Hence, there are good reasons for people of good faith on all sides of this conflict to support the development of this overlapping consensus and remove the issue of same-sex marriage from the culture wars.

Conscience v. Access

A new paper I've just posted to SSRN may be of interest to RLL readers.  The paper--my contribution to a volume edited by William Eskridge and Robin Fretwell Wilson, Religious Freedom, LGBT Rights, and the Prospects for Common Ground (Cambridge University Press 2018)--is titled:

Conscience v. Access and the Morality of Human Rights,
With Particular Reference to Same-Sex Marriage

The paper is available here.  The abstract:

Little remains to be said about “conscience v. access” that has not already been said — and often well said. Or so it seems to me. (Not that a consensus has been achieved. Far from it.) But “little” is not “nothing”. My aim in this chapter: to bring the morality of human rights to bear, and to do so with particular reference to conscience-based opposition to same-sex marriage. In particular, my aim is to bring to bear two rights that are fundamental parts of the morality of human rights: the human right to religious and moral freedom and the human right to moral equality. On "the morality of human rights", see Perry, Michael J., A Global Political Morality: Human Rights, Democracy, and Constitutionalism (April 25, 2017) available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2956843.

The intuition of many persons — an intuition I share — is that the conscience-based claim for an exemption from an antidiscrimination law pressed by the florist (baker, photographer, etc.) who is morally opposed to same-sex marriage presents us with a more complex and difficult issue than the conscience-based claim for an exemption pressed by the florist who is morally opposed to interracial marriage. My argument in this chapter serves to provide a rational vindication of that intuition; it serves to explain why as a matter of principle — specifically, as a matter of the human right to moral equality — the two conscience-based claims merit different responses, even if it is not unreasonable for lawmakers, in legislating, or for judges, in adjudicating, to reach the conclusion that, all things considered, the former claim too should be rejected.

Not all Jews in Israel are Zionists

That not all Jews in Israel are Zionists may not be a startling or revelatory proposition, but after 50 years of Israeli Occupation of Palestinian lands, it is clear that the comparative power of non- and anti-Zionist (and post-Zionists for that matter) Jews in Israel is virtually negligible (that could, however, change), particularly if we are referring to their capacity or potential to alter the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or even have a significant impact on public opinion in this—after Maxime Rodinson and Baruch Kimmerling—colonial settler-state. In his book, The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge (Verso, 2014), Ilan Pappe provides us with essential documentation and historical narrative of the Jewish individuals, groups, and political parties in Israel that are non- and anti-Zionist. In several significant respects, these individuals, groups, and parties are heirs to the political worldview of the “General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia,” in short, “the Bund.” These non-Zionist Jews were communist and more frequently socialist, dedicated to universalist and secularist principles, while no less committed to retaining their Jewish personal and collective identity. The following is a succinct introduction from Jewish Currents several years ago:

“The Jewish Labor Bund was one of the most important leftwing Jewish political organizations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It played a key role in the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party well before its split into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions, and was influentially active in the 1905 Russian Revolution while emerging as a leader of Jewish self-defense against Tsarist pogroms. While the Russian wing of the Bund was destroyed by the Bolsheviks, the Polish Bund remained influential between the two world wars, and Bundist ideas traveled with Jewish emigrants to influence socialist movements throughout the world.

Of course, the Holocaust eliminated the mass Jewish labor movement in Poland, and then the post-war Communist takeover destroyed the Bund politically. While the organization later regrouped as a world federation, it survives today as only a marginal movement in Jewish cultural and political life. Even its historical and political significance is recognized by only small numbers of Jews and progressives.

Yet the Bund’s experience as an ethnic and class-based organization arguably encapsulates both the strengths and limitations of the historical, once-prominent Jewish engagement with socialist ideas and movements. The Bund was an internationalist organization that shared the core belief of all Marxist groups in a common class struggle aimed at achieving the liberation of all workers, whatever their national or religious origin. The Bund nevertheless insisted that Jews were a distinct national group, and that while Jewish workers should prioritize alliances with other socialists to advance the revolutionary cause, a separate Jewish socialist organization was required to adequately represent the national, cultural needs of working-class Jews in Eastern Europe.

The Bund opposed assimilation, defended Jewish civil and cultural rights, and campaigned actively against anti-Semitism. However, the Bund’s socialist universalism precluded support for the notion of Jewish national unity (klal yisrael) or for the narrow advancement of Jewish sectional interests. It eschewed any automatic solidarity with middle-or upper-class Jews, and generally rejected political collaboration with Jewish groups representing religious, Zionist or conservative viewpoints. The Bund’s famous anthem, known as “The Oath” (di shvue in Yiddish), composed by the Yiddish poet and cultural researcher Sh. An-sky in 1902, made no specific reference to Jews or Jewish suffering.

The Bund’s determination to be both militantly socialist and Jewish often left it politically isolated, accused of being ideologically purist and sectarian and unwilling to engage in pragmatic alliances with either moderate socialists or non-socialist Jews to achieve political power. Still, the Bund’s perspective arguably reflected the real experiences of its working-class constituency. Jews in Tsarist Russia and Poland between the wars were heavily divided by economic and social factors, with Jewish workers employed almost exclusively by Jewish employers, due to the anti-Semitism of their neighbors. As a result, the class struggle of Jewish workers was principally an internal Jewish class war. There was no united Jewish nation, and the Bund could not help seeing many Jews as the class enemy.

The Bund was disappointed by the failure of broader socialist groups to display active solidarity with persecuted Jewish workers or with the Bund’s consistent internationalist values. Tensions between the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party as well as the Bolsheviks/Communists (under their various titles in Russia and Poland) reflected the Bund’s concern that the specific rights of Jewish workers were being subordinated either to Polish nationalist concerns or to wider socialist agendas. This was why the Bund remained organizationally independent of these larger movements.” [….] The remainder of this article from Jewish Currents is found here.

*           *           *

The stage set, I now want to introduce this emotionally powerful film about a group of surviving members of the anti-Zionist and socialist Bund movement from Poland now living in Israel. Although made in 2012, it has now become available on YouTube. The story is of course tragic, but it’s a compelling reminder of what it means to remain committed to your ideals and principles even if those around you have lost their moral compass if not their minds. It is also a reminder of the fact that the many things we struggle for on the Left may not bear fruit for several or more generations, that we will likely never see the setting at the bountiful table we’ve been preparing for several centuries now. (‘Tis true, nevertheless, that we may win occasional battles and accomplish significant goals on a small scale, out of the limelight, on the terrain of everyday life or even within the greater social and cultural milieu.)

Here is the official introduction to the film: “Bundaim explores the personal journey and opinion of the Israeli director Eran Torbiner, who examines the Bund alternative, why it was forgotten following the Holocaust, and how necessary it is today.

Torbiner follows the last surviving comrades in Israel of the socialist and anti-Zionist Bund movement, the strongest Jewish movement in Poland and the main opponent of the Zionists before WWII. The Bund was established 110 years ago, at the same time as Zionism. The two have contrasting ideologies: the Bund’s central principles are socialism and the right of Jews to preserve and nurture their Jewish identity, the Yiddish language in particular, anywhere in the world and with equal rights. Zionism, on the other hand, struggled to establish a home for Jews in Israel, to create a new Jewish image and revive the Hebrew language.

The Bund and its leaders and activists were almost totally wiped out during WWII and their remnants were scattered to all corners of the world. Today, the last of Israel’s Bund members gather every two weeks, on Wednesdays, around tables set with white bread, herring and cheesecake.”

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Nobel Peace Prize We Can All Live With

Here’s a Nobel Peace Prize we can all live with:

(Reuters) – “The Norwegian Nobel Committee, warning of a rising risk of nuclear war, awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to a little-known [well, that depends upon the circles in which one circulates] international campaign group advocating for a ban on nuclear weapons. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) describes itself as a coalition of grassroots non-government groups in more than 100 nations. It began in Australia and was officially launched in Vienna in 2007.”

• ICAN’s website is here (and be sure to ‘like’ their FB page).
• For readers who may not know of this, my bibliography for nuclear weapons is here.
• The important Arms Control Law blog is here.
• And Atomic Reporters is an independent, non-profit, incorporated in Canada at the end of 2012, operating as an officially recognised international NGO from Austria, providing substantive and non-partisan information to journalists about nuclear science and technology.

“Animal Colonialism: The Case of Milk”

New article of interest: Mathilde Cohen, “Animal Colonialism: The Case of Milk,” American Journal of International Law Unbound (September 2017) Volume 111: 267-271.

[Being a vegan, and with a significant portion of my worldview best described as Marxist, I’m predisposed to find the argument in this very short article congenial. No doubt others will view it differently.]

The first two paragraphs:

“Greta Gaard writes that ‘[t]he pervasive availability of cows’ milk today—from grocery stores to gas stations—is a historically unprecedented product of industrialization, urbanization, culture, and economics.’ To these factors, I would add colonialism and international law; the latter understood broadly to include the rules considered binding between states and nations, transnational law, legal transplants, international food aid, and international trade law. Until the end of the Nineteenth Century, the majority of the world population neither raised animals for their milk nor consumed animal milk. Humans are unique in the mammalian realm in that they drink the milk of other species, including beyond infancy. With the European conquest of the New World and other territories starting in the Sixteenth Century, dairying began to spread worldwide—settlers did not set out to colonize lands and people alone; they brought with them their flora, fauna, and other forms of life, including lactating animals such as cows and sheep.

Bridging the gap between scholarship on animal colonialism and on imperialism and motherhood, this essay argues that lactating animals became integral parts of colonial and neocolonial projects as tools of agro-expansionism and human population planning. Due to its disruptive effects on breastfeeding cultures, the global spread of dairying has not only been detrimental for the welfare of animals, but also for humans, especially mothers and their children. I recognize the simplistic aspect of grouping and analyzing together disparate epochs, regions, peoples, and animals in an inter-imperial historical vein. I do not mean to imply that these epochs, regions, peoples, and animals belong to a coherent whole, but only that despite their diversity, they have experienced comparable forms of state-building projects centered upon the consumption of animal milk. As an aside, animal protection law and advocacy is often critiqued for its supposed cultural imperialism, but as the following discussion illustrates, it may be that the lack of concern for animal welfare exhibited by legal systems was bequeathed by hegemonic European colonizers.”

Toward a Secular Spiritual Ethics for All of Us

The section that immediately follows is excerpted from Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) by His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso [Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso] born Lhamo Thond

“What we need today is an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without: a secular ethics. [….]

I am confident that it is both possible and worthwhile to attempt a new secular approach to universal ethics. My confidence comes from my conviction that all of us, all human beings, are basically inclined or disposed toward what we perceive to be good. Whatever we do, we do because we think it will be of some benefit. At the same time, we all appreciate the kindness of others. We are all, by nature, oriented toward the basic human values of love and compassion. We all prefer the love of others to their hatred. We all prefer others’ generosity to their meanness. And who among us does not prefer tolerance, respect and forgiveness of our failings to bigotry, disrespect and resentment?

In view of this, I am of the firm opinion that we have within our grasp a way, and a means, to ground inner values without contradicting any religion and yet, crucially, without depending on religion. [….] It is my hope that doing so will help to promote understanding of the need for ethical awareness and inner values in this age of excessive materialism.

At the outset I should make it clear that my intention is not to dictate moral values. Doing that would be of no benefit. To try to impose moral principles from outside, to impose them, as it were, by command, can never be effective. Instead, I call for each of us to come to our own understanding of the importance of inner values. For it is these inner values which are the source of both an ethically harmonious world and the individual peace of mind, confidence and happiness we all seek. Of course, all the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness, can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I believe the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics that is beyond religion. [emphasis added]

*           *           *

In the book from which this was taken, the Dalai Lama proceeds to outline a model containing what he terms “key elements” of such a secular ethics, one that involves, among other things, the promotion of “basic human values.” This project for a (‘spiritual’) secular ethics began with an earlier work, Ethics for the New Millennium (Riverhead Books, 1999). In an interview with the editors of the journal, Rethinking Marxism, the Dalai Lama says: “I wish to develop a moral philosophy that appeals to all, even nonbelievers. Secular spirituality could be the ground for that.”* At the end of our post, I proffer some works by philosophers I think are invaluable for the development of a secular and even spiritual ethics, in other words, an ethics or morality for all of us, religious and non-religious alike, an ethics that by definition is not hostile to either religion or spirituality (its inspiration is in part provided by what the Dalai Lama describes as ‘Indian secularism,’ which entails ‘mutual tolerance and respect for all faiths as well as those of no faith’), indeed, such an ethics might even learn from or draw upon techniques and practices for “ethical living” (e.g., a ‘therapy of desire’ and ‘spiritual exercises’ like self-examination, prosoche, and mind-training or meditation) long cultivated in religious traditions.  

Toward a spiritual secular ethics for all of us

The list of titles in contemporary moral philosophy and ethics—generously construed—that I’ve assembled below is no doubt idiosyncratic and partial (I’ve left out some excellent material devoted to particular or more ‘specialized’ moral topics), its generation owing to works that have shaped my views and lifeworld. I’ve not included the many recent books on virtue ethics or “virtue theory” proper (‘currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics’), which may seem odd, given that virtue ethics is quite compatible with our most enduring religious ethical traditions, as well as classical Greek and Chinese philosophies. The reason for this exclusion does not suggest the irrelevance or comparative insignificance of virtue ethics but is owing simply to the fact that I’ve found this body of literature rather predictable and, more importantly, lacking in a robust social or political dimension, which is not to claim these studies necessarily lack implications for same, only that (at least as far as I can ascertain) their focus has not been systematically and dialectically tied to the powers, structures, and processes of the wider world affecting the terms and conditions of daily life in the intimate realm, the realm in which the various virtues of character are first learned, exemplified, and developed.

The fact that this list has, as it were, a philosophical bias, does not rule out the need for works that help translate their insights into a more accessible rhetoric or discourse (including works of fiction) for those not conversant in professional philosophy. Of course professional philosophy, especially its Anglophone variant, has been by either design or default more or less “secular,” although often that secularism has not been respectful or even tolerant of religious worldviews (cf. the ‘New Atheists’), the typical metaphysical presupposition, assumption or presumption being this or that pugnacious variation on the theme of materialism, physicalism, or naturalism, a fact that may account for the failure of moral philosophy and ethics to consider the wider “humanistic” or “spiritual” value of the techniques or practices of ethical living found within religious worldviews as well as the (‘inner’) values the Dalai Lama cites above: love, compassion, and forgiveness, for example, or, say, nonviolence, at least as that has found a prominent place in Indic religio-philosophical traditions like Jainism and Buddhism. Perhaps this is why the Dalai Lama speaks of a “new” secular approach to ethics, of “find[ing] a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics that is beyond religion.” Such an ethics, while broadly and necessarily in the main rational and reasonable, may also evidence an ability to appreciate that which is not, strictly speaking, within the province of Reason, that which is non-rational or somehow para-rational, be it the emotions (which often have a cognitive component) or assiduously acquired non-conceptual mental states (that appear to have significant psychological and physiological benefits) or aesthetic experience, all of which can be compatible with or supportive of the powers and products of reason and rationality. I’ve found three formulations or conceptions of this non-religious spirituality that are secular in the “Indian” sense intended by the Dalai Lama while not being dependent on any one metaphysical system or picture:

(i) “[A]t the richer end of the spectrum [of spirituality], we find the term used in connection with activities and attitudes which command widespread appeal, irrespective of metaphysical commitment or doctrinal allegiance. Even the most convinced atheist may be prepared to avow an interest in the ‘spiritual’ dimension of human existence, if that dimension is taken to cover forms of life that put a premium on certain kinds of intensely focused moral and aesthetic response, or on the search for deeper reflective awareness of the meaning of our lives and of our relationship to others and to the natural world.”—John Cottingham in The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy, and Human Value (2005)

(ii) In Mad and Divine: Spirit and Psyche in the Modern World (2009) the Indian psychoanalyst and writer Sudhir Kakar, reminds us that

“Spirituality, like culture, has many definitions and yet manages to give a sense of familiarity to most of us. For me, the spiritual occupies a continuum from moments of self-transcendence marked by loving connection to an object—nature, art, visions of philosophy or science, the beloved in sexual embrace—to the mystical union of saints where the sense of the self completely disappears. The spiritual, then, incorporates the transformative possibilities of the human psyche: total love without a trace of hate, selflessness carved out of the psyche’s normal self-centeredness, a fearlessness that is not a counter-phobic reaction to the fear that is an innate part of the human psyche.”

Finally, from the neurosurgeon, and philosopher Grant Gillett:

(iii) “Spirituality lifts our eyes from the possibilities defined by the everyday and economic. The divine wind recalls the breath that gives us life and the cleansing water that allows healing and refreshment in the arid wastes of suffering is a figure with meaning that goes beyond the material. In the most unlikely places we find loving and transformative touches, that are the things of the spirit in that they are ways not only of understanding but also beatifying what we do, however bloody, messy and unromantic it is. We are beset by directives and discourses that reduce, demean, and obscure our humanity, that are not noble, uplifting, inspiring, and fulfilling. We can render life in operational (or narrowly functional) terms and make it tolerable through escapism and pleasure but there is another way. We live and love in a world where real tragedies happen, real joy is found, and real connections are forged through time and across barriers of culture and position. In those things we discover the resonance in ourselves of inscriptions, utterances, and works that deepen our understanding.” — Grant Gillett, Subjectivity and Being Somebody: Human Identity and Neuroethics (2008)