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- Evan ThompsonAuthor
"Plato's dialogues are saturated with references to love and desire. Indeed, the “soul-mate” idea, ubiquitous in contemporary romantic culture, seems to have its origins in a tale of "two becoming one" in the experience of love, which Plato tells in his great work on love, the Symposium. This work also contains a forceful rejection of this idea. The article explores the idea, Plato's rejection of it, and assesses its plausibility."--- Dr. Frisbee Sheffield (Cambridge University)
"This Valentine’s Day, couples around the world will celebrate their relationships. In doing so, they will almost certainly assume that part of what makes those relationships so wonderful is that they have found one special person whom they plan to love exclusively. However, I’m going to suggest that we shouldn’t unreflectively assume that “true” erotic love is monogamous. In fact, a requirement to be monogamous is philosophically puzzling and requires defence. Nonetheless, I’ll show that under the right conditions, monogamy can be defended. Indeed, under the right conditions, monogamy can be marvelous!"---Dr. Fiona Woollard (University of Southampton)
"In this article I argue for a distinction between two notions of self-love. One is the narcissistic variety that seems exemplified by Donald Trump’s egoistic and impulsive tendency to satisfy merely his own desires. The other is the selfless variety that is morally respectable and that can be modeled on the ordinary love relation between two persons. I explore in the article whether Donald Trump would be capable of loving himself in this selfless, morally respectable way."----By Professor Jan Bransen (Radboud University)
Is the experience we often call "love at first sight" really love, as the expression suggests? Especially on a day like Valentine's day, many will enthusiastically answer "yes!" But then, how can we distinguish the experience of love at first sight from the experience of infatuation - apart from the fact that we retrospectively see that one went well, and the other didn't? Also, taking one step back, what is it we lose or gain by approaching or separating love at first sight and love? In this short essay, Christian Maurer (University of Lausanne) explores several approaches to love at first sight and love, and raises some doubts about associating them too closely.
"In this paper, I consider what I take to be the pickup artist’s most promising responses to the moral case against boorish pressuring, and argue that these responses largely fail. I close by considering the implications of all of this for the practice of pickup artistry and, more generally, for anyone engaged in finding, attracting, and seducing a new sexual partner." ---- Professor Eric M. Cave (Arkansas State University).
"This essay reflects on some of the evaluative consequences of modern technology in general, and then looks more closely at the impact of digital technology on personal relationships. Is online dating just a different means to an age-old end? Or has the rise of technologies like Tinder signal a more deep seated change?"--- Gordon Graham (Princeton Theological Seminary).
President Trump and other up-and-coming populists are now promising to give back genuine power to these “forgotten men and women” in a way that previous elected career politicians have demonstrably failed to do. Yet, the question many resented pundits and worried citizens are asking, is whether electing these unconventional leaders will in fact help the losers of globalization, or will it in the long-term endanger not only the aggregate economic and social well-being of most citizens, blue and white collar workers alike, but also the moral standing of liberal democratic societies in a world of increasing authoritarian radicalism?
"The Solomon Asch experiments offer a window into Donald Trump’s electoral victory. We Trump supporters, like Asch’s subjects, found ourselves surrounded by people who insisted on things we could plainly see to be false. Trump, unlike the other candidates, generally told the truth about the problems facing the United States. Criticisms of him were based on lies and misunderstandings. His extreme statements, even when we disagreed with them, showed him to be a courageous fighter and enabled us to say what we thought."--- Professor Daniel Bonevac (The University of Texas, Austin)
“The capacity – indeed, the sometimes convulsive compulsion – of contemporary populists to simultaneously claim victimhood and outraged innocence, and to assert mastery over and lash out at (vulnerable) others, would likely not surprise or bemuse Berlin.”---Professor Joshua L. Cherniss (Georgetown University)
"Contrary to the conventional view, the election of Donald Trump is not best characterized as a misguided revolt by those who rightly felt that the economy was leaving them behind, for such an explanation is not supported by the facts.What the election of Donald Trump actually represents is a rejection of the liberal values that America was thought to pre-eminently represent."---Professor Mark R. Reiff (University of California, Davis)
"Donald Trump wants to build a wall on America’s southern border to restrict immigration. He argues that tightening border controls would increase American wages, create jobs, and ensure that incoming immigrants will “share our values and respect our people." Trump’s plan is indefensible on economic or ethical grounds. Immigration enriches, rather than impoverishes, the American economy. It raises the wages of the average American worker and immigrants tend to be a net fiscal... benefit to the countries they enter. What’s more, Americans have moral obligations to prospective immigrants. It’s morally wrong to forcibly deprive people of the opportunity to compete in the American labor market and thereby escape from poverty. In short, closing the border is a policy that takes unethical means to a destructive end."---Professor Christopher Freiman (College of William & Mary)
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"Trump campaigned on a pledge to lower immigration and deport many immigrants, although it is still unclear whether he will actually implement these policies. In this article, I evaluate Trump’s proposed immigration policies. I argue that these policies are terrible. Trump’s policies would harm immigrants and American citizens and this is a strong reason against them. Moreover, these policies lack a good countervailing justification. I conclude by arguing that people should resist Trump’s immigration policies, should they be implemented. Citizens and immigrants should refuse to help the Trump administration carry out its plans and they should obstruct it whenever possible by, for instance, disobeying the law."---Dr. Javier Hidalgo (University of Richmond)
"On the basis of his rhetoric during the general election campaign and early cabinet appointments prior to his inauguration, president-elect Trump can be expected to further restrict U.S. immigration while also rolling back the Obama administration's climate change mitigation measures and jeopardizing the 2015 Paris Agreement, which depended on those programs being enacted. Together, these would likely speed and intensify the environmental changes that are projected to displa...ce millions of people from territories rendered uninhabitable by climate change while undermining the securing of adequate options for resettling these environmental migrants. Here, I explore the problem of climate-induced displacement along with the obligations of states to accept environmental migrants, speculating on how the incoming Trump administration’s climate and immigration policies that are a product of the insular populism that swept him into office may initially further fuel that populism, but will eventually face a reckoning as their combination exacerbates a crisis that it will be unable to resolve."--- Professor Steve Vanderheiden (University of Colorado)
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"This article provides suggestions for those of us who favor just and humane immigration policies, backed by liberal, democratic, and cosmopolitan values. I argue that we should first seek to limit the damage caused by this upsurge in vicious nationalism by focusing on protecting especially vulnerable and potentially sympathetic groups, while resisting the imposition of explicitly racist and even unreasonably mean immigration policies. I then provide a map for going forward by ensuring that immigration policies can be seen as ensuring reciprocity among all parties."--- Professor Matthew Lister (University of Pennsylvania)
"Capitalism’s demand for cheap labour has seen the globalisation of industry. Now that it has a new source of workers in the form of robots, it seems fanciful to expect the owners of the means of production to invest in high cost human labour."---Dr. Mark Howard (Monash University)
