Humanities

Hannah Arendt’s analysis of Adolf Eichmann is commonly understood as locating Eichmann’s evil within the phenomenon of thoughtlessness.  However, this interpretation has failed to be action guiding, is inconsistent with her theory of judgment, and leads to an unnecessary schism within Arendt’s overall philosophical work.  In this paper I want to motivate a shift in focus towards Arendt’s account of world alienation as a more insightful avenue into how an unremarkable bureaucrat became one of the most notorious war criminals in the 20th century.

Rachel Carson begins her revolutionary book Silent Spring with a quote from E.B. White that reads “we would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively.”  While White’s advice can account for an instrumental relationship towards nature, I believe that the more important relationship offered in his recommendation is one of appreciation or gratitude.  The important point to recognize in the deeper layer of White’s quote is that attempting to adapt ourselves to the planet involves first recognizing the planet as something more than a mere tool or instrument to be bent into shape for human needs, which implies that the planet has some kind of value independent of our human needs.  This raises a problem with regard to White’s recommendation understood as imploring us to take up an attitude of gratitude because gratitude seems to have an inescapable instrumental dimension to its meaning, i.e. I can only appreciate or be grateful for receiving a benefit of one sort or another.  If this is true, then gratitude cannot address what it means to respect the value of nature in anything but instrumental terms.  This would appear to be a fatal blow to considering gratitude as an environmental virtue.
However, on the other hand, It seems perfectly reasonable to say that one is grateful for the existence of sunsets over ocean waters or the diversity and variety of plants and animals in nature.  If we are good Stoics, then it might even make sense to say that we are grateful for the kosmos in general.  At a basic experiential level it seems possible to take White’s advice and view nature appreciatively with a sense of gratitude for its existence as what it is, but how can we make sense of this non-instrumental dimension of gratitude?  This paper aims to develop a conception of gratitude as an especially unique kind of environmental virtue compatible with White’s advice to view nature appreciatively by valuing its unique and non-instrumental value.  In reconstructing the conception of gratitude I will incorporate Simon Hailwood’s “otherness view” of environmental ethics because it offers a promising approach towards understanding how to value nature non-instrumentally and, thus, the conception of gratitude as an environmental virtue offered here will emphasize the role of nature’s “otherness.”  The notion of “otherness” is a difficult and complicated concept and this paper will clarify how we can speak coherently of the otherness in nature in a similar way that we speak of our fellow human beings as Other.  Adopting this perspective is important for recognizing the difficult balance we must maintain in respecting nature’s otherness on the one hand while also valuing our shared commonalities and interdependence on the other.

Course Description: This course examines the transition from the ancient and medieval period into what is commonly referred to as the " modern " period in philosophy. Even though this refers loosely to intellectuals and philosophers writing during the 17 th and 18 th centuries, it is not an anachronistic title because our contemporary intellectual culture is a direct growth out of and response to this period in philosophy. More specifically, this period set the research agenda and questions that are still discussed throughout all different fields of study. For example, in particular to philosophy of mind and neuroscience, it was during this period that the mind and body were first clearly distinguished as separate substances and the contemporary debates concerning the possibility of Artificial Intelligence and the nature of the mind still revolve around these " modern " philosophical arguments and ideas. We'll begin by looking at the pre-modern philosophers and thinkers that set up the questions and problems that motivate the dialogue within the modern period, particularly in the fields of cosmology, metaphysics, and epistemology. Aristotle is the most formative figure of these earlier thinkers, but we will also read selections from Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Michel de Montaigne. These thinkers will set the different questions and issues that will prove to be formative in the period of modern philosophy, especially in regard to the debate over Rationalism and Empiricism. The two Rationalists that we will read are Descartes and Leibniz. The three British Empiricists we will read are Berkeley, Locke, and (most importantly) Hume. The last of these empiricists is primarily responsible for the development of the thinker typically labeled as being the culmination of the modern period, Immanuel Kant.

Course Proposal Description: This course aims to examine the role of self-interest in morality, the purpose and motivation for thinking ethically, the development of the conception of 'evil' and the historical development of the problem of evil throughout early modern philosophy until now. The course will begin with a short introduction to moral philosophy and then move quickly into questions of relativism and moral skepticism that will be most thoroughly addressed by Peter Singer's text. From there we move on to Nietzsche's analysis of the development of the concept of 'evil' before dedicating our attention to the important role that the problem of evil of has played through modern philosophy and how it still impacts our moral thinking in the 21st century.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, those who teach Russian history have faced a conundrum now that the convenient bipolarity of the Cold War is over fifteen years departed.  I feel that I can use such a term as “convenient” comfortably at this time since for many scholars, including myself, the Cold War can now be thought of as a time of relative stability in comparison to today’s uncertain times.  In this era of the eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union, nations and territories which were under Russian or Soviet influence for most of the twentieth century are now orienting themselves away from Eurasia.  Many regions that were once part of the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or COMECON, are now a part of the decidedly Western institutions of NATO and the EU.  We as educators in Slavic studies must approach the history of Russia in a manner that underscores its importance while at the same time emphasizing Russia’s relevance in a world which appears more interested in lands outside of the former Soviet Union.  It is my view that a pedagogical approach that utilizes the rubric of Eurasianism, among other perspectives, can drive home for students, especially undergraduates, the notion of Russia’s continued viability and importance in a multipolar and insecure world.

Heralded by Soviet propaganda as the “Path to the Future,” the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) represented the hopes and dreams of Brezhnev and the Communist Party elite of the late Soviet era. Begun in 1974, and spanning approximately 2,000 miles after twenty-nine years of halting construction, the BAM project was intended to showcase the national unity, determination, skill, technology, and industrial might that Soviet socialism claimed to embody. More pragmatically, the Soviet leadership envisioned the BAM railway as a trade route to the Pacific, where markets for Soviet timber and petroleum would open up, and as an engine for the development of Siberia. Despite these aspirations and the massive commitment of economic resources on its behalf, BAM proved to be a boondoggle-a symbol of late communism's dysfunctionality-and a cruel joke to many ordinary Soviet citizens. In reality, BAM was woefully bereft of quality materials and construction, and victimized by poor planning and an inferior workforce. Today, the railway is fully complete, but remains a symbol of the profligate spending and inefficiency that characterized the Brezhnev years. In Brezhnev's Folly, Christopher J. Ward provides a groundbreaking social history of the BAM railway project. He examines the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of workers from the diverse republics of the USSR and other socialist countries, and his extensive archival research and interviews with numerous project workers provide an inside look at the daily life of the BAM workforce. We see firsthand the disorganization, empty promises, dire living and working conditions, environmental damage, and acts of crime, segregation, and discrimination that constituted daily life during the project's construction. Thus, perhaps, we also see the final irony of BAM: that the most lasting legacy of this misguided effort to build Soviet socialism is to shed historical light on the profound ills afflicting a society in terminal decline.