tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/john-locke-24161/articlesJohn Locke – The Conversation2023-08-01T20:13:07Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2103792023-08-01T20:13:07Z2023-08-01T20:13:07ZIs it OK to pirate TV shows and movies from streaming services that exploit artists? An ethicist weighs in<p>You’ve probably heard that Hollywood writers and actors are striking. </p>
<p>One of the main revelations to outside observers is the hard treatment meted out by production companies (in concert with streaming giants) to artists. Even very <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/07/18/the-bear-writer-who-lived-below-the-poverty-line-rips-disney-ceo/">successful</a> and sometimes <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sag-strike-residuals-explainer-mandy-moore-sanaa-lathan-orange-is-the-new-black-210639209.html">famous</a> writers or actors can struggle to make a <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/writers-guild-streaming-report-members-falling-behind-1235352341/">living wage</a>, with residuals – the money these artists make when their work is re-aired – dropping precipitously in the streaming era. </p>
<p>One of the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=O2KsAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=hollywood+defends+copyright&source=bl&ots=6vtFZzM6yT&sig=ACfU3U1er3ABl7KYfqLAO1OUnwjmsUBqAQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj8-NuZhLCAAxVocGwGHQ6lCBAQ6AF6BAhyEAM#v=onepage&q=hollywood%20defends%20copyright&f=false">key reasons</a> the entertainment industry urges us to support copyright and avoid piracy is to support artists. So what happens to our moral calculations when it turns out industries direct so little revenue to creative workers? Should we really feel morally beholden to pay streaming services that exploit artists? </p>
<p>The strike presents a worthwhile moment to think about why we have copyright, and whether it is a law worthy of respect.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ronald-reagan-led-the-1960-actors-strike-and-then-became-an-anti-union-president-209800">How Ronald Reagan led the 1960 actors' strike – and then became an anti-union president</a>
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<h2>What is piracy?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/piracy-copyright-crime">Piracy</a> refers to the illegal copying, accessing, downloading, streaming or distributing of another’s created work of entertainment, without transforming that work. (For example, <a href="https://legalvision.com.au/does-fanfiction-infringe-copyright/">fan fiction</a> often violates copyright, but because it transforms the work, it isn’t piracy.)</p>
<p>Content industries tend to stereotype pirates as rapacious, remorseless thieves. But <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25482147">many pirates</a> pay respect to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0196859909333697">copyright law’s spirit</a>, if not its black-letter obligations.</p>
<p>Consider four different types of pirates:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>takers</strong> take whatever they want without compunction</li>
<li><strong>samplers</strong> pirate only to sample works. Once they find something they enjoy, they purchase it</li>
<li><strong>finders</strong> only pirate works that aren’t otherwise available</li>
<li><strong>non-payers</strong> only pirate works they would never otherwise have purchased (for example, because they do not have the money to pay for it).</li>
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<p>These four types of pirates raise different moral concerns, and it can be tricky to <a href="https://hughbreakey.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Breakey-2018-Ethics-of-Digital-Piracy-ONLINE.pdf">tease out the ethics</a> of each. Let’s confine our attention here to <em>taking</em>, which is the most concerning type of piracy.</p>
<p>Is piratical taking of copyrighted works ethical?</p>
<h2>Is copyright law morally right?</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious question to consider will be whether we agree with copyright. Copyright law has <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/">two main moral justifications</a>.</p>
<p>First, copyright might be justified on the basis that it provides incentives to artists to develop their work. The production of new art usually requires significant labour. Without some way of supporting artists for what they do, there would be less art and entertainment for us all to enjoy. This “<a href="https://utilitarianism.net/">utilitarian</a>” argument justifies copyright because of its good consequences.</p>
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<p>Second, we might think artists <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2856883">deserve to be compensated</a>. If through hard work and talent someone creates something that gives enjoyment and fulfilment to millions, then it seems unfair if they don’t get rewarded. This is a rights-based or desert-based moral justification.</p>
<p>When industry bodies <a href="https://escholarship.org/content/qt3fk848wz/qt3fk848wz_noSplash_3c19eb9dc89e79675946515dd1b1e8e4.pdf?t=oo6uou">appeal</a> to the need for copyright law to protect and support artists, they are tapping into the moral force of these arguments. </p>
<p>Still, both these justifications are controversial. <a href="http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/papers/morallyjustified.pdf">Reasonable</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright">informed</a> people can disagree with them.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-convicts-to-pirates-australias-dubious-legacy-of-illegal-downloading-39912">From convicts to pirates: Australia's dubious legacy of illegal downloading</a>
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<h2>Understanding legitimacy</h2>
<p>Suppose we disagree with a law. Do we have the right to ignore it? There are two good reasons to think we don’t have that right.</p>
<p>First, if people only respected laws they already agreed with, then law itself would cease to function. The main reason we have the <a href="https://www.ruleoflaw.org.au/what-is-the-rule-of-law/">rule of law</a> is to avoid everyone simply doing whatever they want. </p>
<p>As political theorists such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Locke">John Locke</a> argued, such situations quickly descend to violence, as everyone enforces their chosen understanding of rights and obligations. Lawless societies are not nice places to live.</p>
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<p>Second, democratically made laws have a <a href="https://resume.uni.lu/story/democratic-legitimacy">special claim</a> to legitimacy. As human institutions, democracies are inevitably flawed. Yet they provide an important way that everyone in a community can come together as equals and play a role in deciding the laws that will bind them. </p>
<p>These two arguments show we can disagree with a law, but still think it should be respected.</p>
<h2>So, should we turn to piracy?</h2>
<p>Where, then, are we left when we find that many entertainment industries exploit artists, and that little of the money from our purchases trickles through to the artists who created it?</p>
<p>For a start, we have reason to think that such industry bodies are not just being exploitative. They are also being hypocritical and manipulative when they appeal to artists to persuade us to support copyright. </p>
<p>If they really were morally committed to supporting artists, their own behaviour would reflect this. </p>
<p>The lack of support to artists may also prompt us to rethink how well copyright law really serves the justifications presented for it.</p>
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<p>Can we go a step further, and say that if entertainment industries are such exploitative hypocrites, we’re entitled to stop handing over our hard-earned cash to access their shows?</p>
<p>If the above arguments are on the right track, then the answer is “no”.</p>
<p>For one thing, copyright law is still the democratically created law of the land. We wouldn’t want other people dispensing with laws and entitlements we cherish and rely on. So we have reason not to break laws that are important to other people.</p>
<p>More specifically, many artists at least make <em>some</em> money from the present system. If we are morally outraged at how little our purchases contribute to their wages, it would be a wildly inappropriate response to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11393162/piracy-arthouse-film-extinct-jason-blum">stop paying altogether</a> (and thereby strip our contribution to artists down to zero!).</p>
<p>While we should resist resorting to piracy, the Hollywood strikes do invite us to think critically about how well our current laws live up to their justifications, and whether there are other ways we can support artists.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/computer-written-scripts-and-deepfake-actors-whats-at-the-heart-of-the-hollywood-strikes-against-generative-ai-210191">Computer-written scripts and deepfake actors: what’s at the heart of the Hollywood strikes against generative AI</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Breakey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Given the hypocritical and exploitative treatment of artists by entertainment industries, do we really have moral obligations to pay for streaming services?Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law. President, Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics., Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978772023-01-20T13:37:12Z2023-01-20T13:37:12ZAll politicians must lie from time to time, so why is there so much outrage about George Santos? A political philosopher explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505395/original/file-20230119-21-2g8xoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C49%2C8215%2C5436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rep. George Santos stands during the voting for speaker in the House chamber in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Congress/e1fa5af411b547e38518f188d6d654ea/photo?Query=george%20santos&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=104&currentItemNo=27">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea that politicians are dishonest is, at this point, something of a cliché – although few have taken their dishonesty as far as George Santos, U.S. representative for New York’s 3rd Congressional District, who <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/01/the-everything-guide-to-george-santoss-lies.html">seems to have lied about</a> his education, work history, charitable activity, athletic prowess and even his place of residence. </p>
<p>Santos may be exceptional in how many lies he has told, but politicians seeking election have incentives to tell voters what they want to hear – and there is some empirical evidence that a willingness to lie may be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008144117">helpful in the process of getting elected</a>.</p>
<p>If this is true, though, then why should voters care that they have been lied to? </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://phil.washington.edu/people/michael-blake">political philosopher</a> whose work focuses on the moral foundations of democratic politics, I am interested in the moral reasons voters in general have a right to feel resentment when they discover that their elected representatives have lied to them. Political philosophers offer four distinct responses to this question – although none of these responses suggest that all lies are necessarily morally wrong.</p>
<h2>1. Lying is manipulative</h2>
<p>The first reason to resent being lied to is that it is a form of disrespect. When you lie to me, you treat me as a thing to be manipulated and used for your purposes. In the terms used by philosopher Immanuel Kant, when you lie to me you treat me as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2010.01507.x">a means or a tool</a>, rather than a person with a moral status equal to your own. </p>
<p>Kant himself took this principle as a reason to condemn all lies, however useful – but other philosophers have thought that some lies were so important that they might be compatible with, or even express, respect for citizens. </p>
<p>Plato, notably, argues in “The Republic” that when the public good requires a leader to lie, the citizens should be <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0168%3Abook%3D3%3Apage%3D389">grateful for the deceptions of their leaders</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ias.edu/scholars/walzer">Michael Walzer</a>, a modern political philosopher, echoes this idea. Politics requires the building of coalitions and the making of deals – which, in a world full of moral compromise, may entail being deceptive about what one is planning and why. As Walzer puts it, no one succeeds in politics without <a href="http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Philosophers/Walzer/PoliticaAction_TheProblemofDirtyHabnds.pdf">being willing to dirty their hands</a> – and voters should prefer politicians to get their hands dirty, if that is the cost of effective political agency. </p>
<h2>2. Abuse of trust</h2>
<p>A second reason to resent lies begins with the idea of predictability. If our candidates lie to us, we cannot know what they really plan to do – and, hence, cannot trust that we are voting for the candidate who will best represent our interests.</p>
<p>Modern political philosopher <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/beerbohm/home">Eric Beerbohm</a> argues that when politicians speak to us, they invite us to trust them – and a politician who lies to us <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/beerbohm/files/beerbohm_the_ethics_of_electioneering_jpp.pdf">abuses that trust</a>, in a way that we may rightly resent. </p>
<p>These ideas are powerful, but they also seem to have some limits. Voters may not need to believe candidates’ words in order to understand their intentions and thereby come to accurate beliefs about what they plan to do. </p>
<p>To take one recent example: The majority of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, when he was trumpeting the idea of making Mexico pay for a border wall, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/14/even-trump-voters-think-mexico-paying-for-the-wall-is-kind-of-a-joke/">did not believe that it was actually possible</a> to build a wall that would be paid for by Mexico. They did not take Trump to be describing a literal truth, but expressing an untruth that was indicative of Trump’s overall attitude toward migration and toward Mexico – and voted for him on the basis of that attitude. </p>
<h2>3. Electoral mandate</h2>
<p>The third reason we might resent lies told on the campaign trail stems from the idea of an electoral mandate. Philosopher John Locke, whose writings influenced the Declaration of Independence, regarded political authority as stemming from the <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII">consent of the governed</a>; this consent might be illegitimate were it to be obtained by means of deception.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white engraving of a man with shoulder-length hair" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505396/original/file-20230119-17-r25b8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Philosopher John Locke championed the idea of the consent of the governed.</span>
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<p>This idea, too, has power – but it also runs up against the sophistication of both modern elections and modern voters. Campaigns do not pretend to give a dispassionate description of political ideals, after all. They are closer to rhetorical forms of combat and involve considerable amounts of <a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/02/09/the-history-of-political-spin-in-washington-dc-and-why-its-not-so-bad-for-us-as-youd-think/">deliberate ambiguity, rhetorical presentation and self-interested spin</a>. </p>
<p>More to the point, though, voters understand this context and rarely regard any candidate’s presentation as stemming solely from a concern for the unalloyed truth.</p>
<h2>4. Unnecessary and disprovable</h2>
<p>The lies of George Santos, however, do seem to have provoked something like <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/29/1146096826/rep-elect-george-santos-faces-growing-anger-from-new-york-voters">resentment and outrage</a>, which suggests that they are somehow unlike the usual forms of deceptive practice undertaken during political campaigns. And this fact leads to the final reason to resent deception, which is that voters do not accept being lied to unnecessarily – nor about matters subject to easy empirical proof or disproof. </p>
<p>It seems clear that voters may sometimes be willing to accept deceptive and dissembling political candidates, given the fact that effective political agency may involve the use of deceptive means. Santos, however, lied about matters as tangential to politics as his nonexistent history as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/11/santos-lies-volleyball/">star player for Baruch College’s volleyball team</a>. This lie was unnecessary, given its tenuous relationship to his candidacy for the House of Representatives – and easily disproved, given the fact that he did not actually attend Baruch.</p>
<p>I believe voters may have made their peace with some deceptive campaign practices. If Walzer is right, they should expect that an effective candidate will be imperfectly honest at best. But candidates who are both liars and bad at lying can find no such justification, since they are unlikely to be believed and thus incapable of achieving those goods that justify their deception. </p>
<p>If voters have made their peace with some degree of lying, in short, they are nonetheless still capable of resenting candidates who are unskilled at the craft of political deception.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197877/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Blake receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>Constituents’ willingness to overlook deception may depend, in part, on whether politicians lie well and with a good purpose.Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1892852022-12-20T22:18:24Z2022-12-20T22:18:24ZSmart buildings: What happens to our free will when tech makes choices for us?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481358/original/file-20220826-14-d0tvbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C8%2C988%2C389&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A so-called smart building. What will become of our free will when choices are made for us by technology embedded in the building?
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Smart buildings, which are central to the concept of smart cities, are a <a href="https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/united-kingdom/insights/smart-buildings">new generation of buildings</a> in which technological devices, such as sensors, are embedded in the structure of the buildings themselves. Smart buildings promise to personalize the experiences of their occupants by using real-time feedback mechanisms and forward-looking management of interactions between humans and the built environment.</p>
<p>This personalization includes continuous monitoring of the activities of occupants and the use of sophisticated profiling models. While these issues spark concerns about privacy, this is a matter of not seeing the forest for the trees. The questions raised by the massive arrival of digital technologies in our living spaces go far beyond this.</p>
<p>As a professor of real estate at ESG-UQAM, I specialize in innovations applied to the real estate sector. My research focuses on smart commercial buildings, for which I am developing a conceptual framework and innovative tools to enable in-depth analysis in the context of smart cities.</p>
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À lire aussi :
<a href="https://theconversation.com/get-ready-for-the-invasion-of-smart-building-technologies-following-covid-19-168646">Get ready for the invasion of smart building technologies following COVID-19</a>
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<h2>“Choices” proposed, or imposed</h2>
<p>Thanks to <a href="https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-eng.html?lang=eng&i=1&srchtxt=ubiquitous+computing&codom2nd_wet=1#resultrecs">ubiquitous computing</a>, interactions between building occupants and nested technology are quiet and invisible. As a result, the occupants’ attention is never drawn to the massive presence of computers operating permanently in the background.</p>
<p>Personalization allows us, for example, to have the ideal temperature and brightness in our workspace at all times. This would be idyllic if this personalization did not come at a cost to the occupants, namely their freedom of action and, more fundamentally, their free will.</p>
<p>As technology increasingly mediates our experiences in the built environment, choices will be offered to us, or even imposed on us, based on the profile the building’s technology device models have created of us in function of the goals, mercantile or otherwise, of those who control them (such as technology companies).</p>
<p>Having the ability to decide either to do something or not, and to act accordingly, is a basic definition of freedom. Smart buildings challenge this freedom by interfering with our ability to act, and more fundamentally, with our ability to decide for ourselves. Is freedom of action even possible for the occupants of a building where interactions between humans and their built environment are produced using algorithms that are never neutral?</p>
<h2>Satisfied… but not free</h2>
<p>The 17th-century English philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/">John Locke’s</a> famous analogy of the locked room sheds light on this question. Suppose a sleeping man is transported to a room where, upon awakening, he is engaged in activities that bring him great satisfaction, such as chatting with a long-lost friend.</p>
<p>Unbeknown to him, the door of the room is locked. Thus, he cannot leave the room if he wants to. He is therefore not free, even though he voluntarily remains in the room and gets extreme satisfaction from what he is doing there.</p>
<p>Locke’s analysis reflects the situation of smart building occupants. They benefit from the personalization of their experiences from which they derive great satisfaction. However, once they enter a space, technology controls their interactions outside of their awareness. While they may want to stay in the building to enjoy personalized experiences, they are not free. Smart buildings are a high-tech version of Locke’s locked room.</p>
<p>There’s nothing new about the problem. Already in the 19th century, in <em>Notes from the Underground</em> the Russian Fyodor Dostoyevsky identifies the challenges that computational logic poses to free will.</p>
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<p>You will scream at me … that no one is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic. Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic…?</p>
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<h2>Deciding on the role of technology in our living spaces</h2>
<p>Indeed, what can be said about our free will when choices are made for us by technology?</p>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-freedom/">An action is something we do actively</a>, as opposed to things that happen to us in a passive way. Also, the active will to perform an action differs from the passive desire for an act to be done.</p>
<p>While algorithms are concerned with the predictability of human behaviour, things happen passively to the occupants of smart buildings. Their role is limited to receiving stimuli whilst the invisibility of the technology maintains their illusion that they have sole control over their actions.</p>
<p>These human-built environment interactions erode our will to take action, replacing it with desires shaped and calibrated by models over which we have no control. By denying the free will of their occupants, smart buildings challenge the right to action that the German philosopher <a href="https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/everything-is-fragile-reading-arendt-in-the-anthropocene-2020-01-02">Hannah Arendt</a> defines as one of the most fundamental rights of humans, the one that differentiates us from animals.</p>
<p>So, should we prohibit, or at least regulate, the technology embedded in smart buildings?</p>
<p>The answer to this question takes us back to the very origins of Western democracy. Long before the Big Tech companies (<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gafam-stocks.asp">GAFAM</a>), the Greek Socrates (who died in 399 BC) was concerned with the nature of an ideal city. In Plato’s <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/republic/"><em>The Republic</em></a>, Socrates explains that the difference between a city where citizens have all the luxuries and a city without luxuries, which he calls “a city fit for pigs,” is the ability of the residents of the former to choose their way of life, unlike the residents of the latter where this choice is simply not possible.</p>
<p>Smart cities are the digital version of the luxury cities of antiquity. However, without granting their residents the ability to make informed choices about technology, they provide satisfaction at the expense of their rights.</p>
<p>To avoid building an entire environment according to <a href="https://www.ipl.org/essay/It-Is-Better-To-Be-A-Human-P3FJWSK6JE8R">the philosophy of pigs</a>, smart building occupants should retain the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361924759_On_the_Economic_Nature_of_Behavioural_Control_in_Smart_Real_Estate">legally defined right</a> to decide for themselves the role of technology in their living spaces. Only then can their freedom be respected.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189285/count.gif" alt="La Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Lecomte ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Having the ability to decide either to do something or not, and to act accordingly, is a basic definition of freedom. Smart buildings challenge this freedom.Patrick Lecomte, Professor, Real Estate, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1775822022-04-13T14:15:50Z2022-04-13T14:15:50ZCan we ever fully separate our work and home lives? Philosophy suggests we should stop trying<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448101/original/file-20220223-15-tjypry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C6%2C4446%2C2519&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/army-artificial-workers-3d-illustration-1070149298">Photobank.kiev.ua / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you could take work-life balance to its most literal extreme, what would it look like? That’s the central theme of Severance, the sci-fi series that has just finished airing on Apple TV. </p>
<p>Employees working for the fictional corporation Lumon are able to undergo a procedure where their consciousness and memories are divided between work and home. Employees who have been “severed” do not remember anything about their life at work when they clock out, or anything about their home life during working hours. </p>
<p>Severance quickly becomes unsettling when it is implied that in isolating the memories of someone’s work life, a new person is created – a slave who lives only to work. These “new” employees (people’s work-selves) are told they can leave the office whenever they like, but inevitably find themselves sent back to work by their home life counterparts who don’t want to lose their jobs and do not have to endure the horror of living only in the office. </p>
<p>It’s safe to say most of us wouldn’t undergo such a procedure – after all, work is also a place where we make friends who can even <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-your-colleagues-affect-your-home-life-and-vice-versa-175889">help us</a> in our home lives. But the concept presented in Severance raises deep philosophical questions about the relationship between our memories and ourselves.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Working to make a difference in the world but struggling to save for a home. Trying to live sustainably while dealing with mental health issues. For those of us in our twenties and thirties, these are the kinds of problems we deal with every day. <strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series that explores those issues and comes up with solutions.</em></p>
<p><em>More articles:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/news-of-war-can-impact-your-mental-health-heres-how-to-cope-178734?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">News of war can impact your mental health – here’s how to cope</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/would-you-bring-your-dog-to-a-shop-why-retailers-should-be-more-pet-friendly-178112?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Would you bring your dog to a shop? Why retailers should be more pet-friendly</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-it-makes-good-business-sense-for-your-employer-to-look-after-your-mental-health-177503?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Why it makes good business sense for your employer to look after your mental health</a></em></p>
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<p>The show trades on the idea that personhood can be reduced to one’s conscious experiences. The idea being that “I” am the sum total of my remembered experiences, thoughts, desires and emotions, and that my life is the narrative these memories come together to form. As one Lumon employee puts it, “History makes us someone”. There is a rich tradition of philosophical thinking about memory that shares this way of understanding personal identity, most often associated with the 17th-century thinker John Locke. </p>
<p>Questions about personhood – what makes you <em>you</em> and not somebody else – were very important at Locke’s time of writing. For many 17th-century thinkers (for whom Christianity was part of the fabric of society, and atheism was virtually inconceivable), it was a given that after our mortal lives, we would go on to live some kind of afterlife. But who exactly will live that life? </p>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-personal-identity/">Locke’s answer</a> is that for everyone, “consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ‘tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self”. In other words, I am what I am conscious of. He adds that “as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person”. </p>
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<p>Locke teaches us that whatever I remember doing – and <em>only</em> what I remember doing – was done by me. Thus, so long as I continue to have conscious experiences in the afterlife (and remember my past ones), I continue to exist.</p>
<p>The case of literal work-life severance is interesting precisely because the process creates a new person – one who comes into existence (starts being conscious) only when the severing procedure is over. Since that new person only remembers being conscious at work, that person only exists at work. This also seems to be how people within Severance are thinking about things. By cutting myself from my work life, I can avoid having the stresses of work “leak” into the rest of my life, and be a different person when I clock out. </p>
<h2>The Locke problem</h2>
<p>The early episodes of the show suggest that the seemingly neat separation of work-me and home-me is going to cause problems. Likewise, philosophers who responded to Locke – 18th-century thinkers like <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/">George Berkeley</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/">Thomas Reid</a> – pointed out that his account of personhood leads to absurdities. </p>
<p>Am I not the baby who was born on my birthday, because I don’t remember it? Will I not be the old man living through the 2050s if I don’t remember this particular day in 2022? Am I to be absolved of any crimes I commit when I get blackout drunk because I am not, now, in the cold light of day, conscious of them? Such questions led these thinkers to develop alternative accounts of what makes me <em>me</em> – perhaps it’s my soul?. </p>
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<img alt="A man's feet with a professional shoe on the right foot, and a casual sneaker on the left foot" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/448097/original/file-20220223-17-1c9bddt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">What if our work and home selves were completely different people – literally?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/work-life-balance-concept-low-section-1185354394">Black Salmon / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>There are signs that within the world of Severance, there is more to a person than what they can remember. In the opening episode, the main character goes home to find that he has a cut on his forehead from an accident at work that of course, he cannot remember. This is an ominous sign that the scars that your work-self accrues are scars on you, and not some other person. More worryingly, perhaps this means that severed employees are subjecting <em>themselves</em> to a tortuous existence – one made worse by the fact that they cannot remember it. </p>
<p>There are <a href="https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1">good reasons</a> to believe that who “I” am is more than just what I remember – after all, many things have happened to me that I cannot easily recall. How many of us struggle to remember big moments in life, like job interviews? </p>
<p>The timing of Severance’s release is interesting because, after two years of working from home, genuine work-life separation seems less realistic than ever. For many, “work” is not some place we leave home for every morning, but perhaps a spare room or a kitchen table. Consequently, many of us are looking for ways to establish a clean divide between work and our personal lives. But – in line with the message at the heart of Severance – perhaps instead, we should be trying to make peace between the different parts of our lives and thereby understand our full selves better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter West does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Apple TV’s Severance imagines what would happen to our sense of self if we could completely separate our work and home lives.Peter West, Teaching Fellow in Philosophy, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1666632021-08-25T02:44:06Z2021-08-25T02:44:06ZCraig Kelly’s move to Palmer’s United Australia Party shows the need for urgent electoral law reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417727/original/file-20210825-19046-1swydc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The news that Craig Kelly, MP, serial <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/26/mp-craig-kelly-absolutely-outraged-after-facebook-removes-his-page-for-misinformation">purveyor of COVID misinformation</a>, is to join Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party in order <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/a-huge-war-chest-craig-kelly-joins-united-australia-party-for-ad-spend-20210823-p58l8a.html">to fund his damaging ravings</a> on a grander scale, confronts Australian democracy with a dilemma.</p>
<p>How is he to be prevented from adding to the harm he is already doing to the public welfare without trespassing unjustifiably on his right of free speech?</p>
<p>It is a classic example of how populists are exploiting the rights conferred by democracy to undermine democracy.</p>
<p>Kelly is frank about what he intends to do. Referring to his joining the UAP, he told The Sydney Morning Herald:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The crude reality is that I’ll have greater resources.</p>
<p>I have been screaming this stuff from the rooftops for a long time. It’s very hard to get this message through. We have a huge war chest, we can run television commercials, ads, we can finance a proper campaign that no other minor party or independent can.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He says that because these advertisements would be considered party-political advertisements, blocking them would be unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Whether or not he is right about that, it reveals his attitude: a preparedness to exploit a law protecting freedom of political speech so he can go on spreading COVID misinformation in pursuit of elected office.</p>
<p>The electoral and trade practices laws have no provisions to stop him. <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cea1918233/s329.html">Section 329 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act</a> is confined to the issue of whether a publication is likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote. Sections 52 and 53 of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2010C00426">Trade Practices Act</a>, which make false or misleading representations an offence, have nothing to say about political advertising.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-clive-palmers-lockdown-ads-can-be-rejected-by-newspapers-on-ethical-grounds-166099">Why Clive Palmer's lockdown ads can be rejected by newspapers on ethical grounds</a>
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<p>However, there are two philosophical bases for arguing the electoral laws should be amended to thwart this kind of harmful exploitation.</p>
<p>One is John Stuart Mill’s <a href="https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-the-harm-principle/#:%7E:text=The%20harm%20principle%20says%20people,English%20philosopher%20John%20Stuart%20Mill.">harm principle</a>, which says the prevention of harm to others is a legitimate constraint on individual freedom.</p>
<p>The other is from John Locke’s <a href="https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/%7Eecon/ugcm/3ll3/locke/toleration.pdf">A Letter Concerning Toleration</a>. Locke’s principle is that society is not obliged to tolerate actions or positions that undermine the civil order. Corrupting the electoral process as Kelly proposes – by misleading voters – falls well within that compass.</p>
<p>To borrow from Locke’s other great contribution to the development of modern democracy, his <a href="https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1689a.pdf">Second Treatise on Government</a>, such actions or positions would breach the social contract. This contract is built on trust. Individuals submit themselves to the law on the condition that everyone else will do the same. Breaches of that trust are not to be tolerated.</p>
<p>This principle may be extended to other behaviours that breach the public trust: unethical conduct and anti-social conduct that might fall short of illegality but still do harm. Unethical conduct is embodied in Kelly’s stated intention to use Palmer’s millions to amplify his COVID misinformation, which would be to the detriment of public health.</p>
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<p>In common with other mature democracies, Australia has predicated its laws on certain norms concerning truth, responsibility and the preservation of the social contract.</p>
<p>The problem is that in an age when populist politicians, social media and influential elements of mass media combine to spread harmful content, these norms – the guard rails of democracy – are being tested to breaking point.</p>
<p>In Washington on January 6 2021, when the mob invaded Congress, we saw what happens when the guard rails give way. For months leading up to and during the US presidential election, the then President Donald Trump and his mouthpiece, Fox News, abandoned the norm of truth-telling and persuaded a significant plurality of voters that the election was fraudulent.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417730/original/file-20210825-17366-hgcefi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/417730/original/file-20210825-17366-hgcefi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417730/original/file-20210825-17366-hgcefi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417730/original/file-20210825-17366-hgcefi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417730/original/file-20210825-17366-hgcefi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417730/original/file-20210825-17366-hgcefi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/417730/original/file-20210825-17366-hgcefi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The storming of the US Capitol in January shows what can happen when democracy’s guard rails come down.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/AAP</span></span>
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<p>This confronts democracies with a paradox. If they extend free speech even to those who use it to do serious harm, then tolerant societies become defenceless against the baneful effects of this behaviour.</p>
<p>It is akin to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_R9UjFTcWk">Karl Popper’s argument</a> concerning what he called the tolerance paradox:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In common with other democracies, Australia places restrictions on free speech when it does unjustified harm. The defamation and contempt of court laws are just two examples among many.</p>
<p>There is no reason why this principle should not be extended to speech that causes provable harm to the public welfare in pursuit of election to parliament. Those harms could be defined and circumscribed in the Electoral Act without too much difficulty and would certainly include harms to public health.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/right-wing-shock-jock-stoush-reveals-the-awful-truth-about-covid-politics-and-media-ratings-164489">Right-wing shock jock stoush reveals the awful truth about COVID, politics and media ratings</a>
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<p>There is precedent. In the aftermath of the Christchurch terrorism in March 2019, Parliament enacted the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019A00038">Criminal Code Amendment</a> (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act. Abhorrent violent material was confined in its definition to mean murder or attempted murder, a terrorist act, torture, rape or kidnapping. There are provisions to allow for the reporting of these acts.</p>
<p>At the same time, great care needs to be taken to avoid overreach, particularly in a society like Australia’s, which has no constitutional protection for free speech. That situation only sharpens the paradox.</p>
<p>As matters stand, Australia is leaving it to powerful foreign sources such as YouTube, unelected and unaccountable, to restrain the likes of Kelly, as when it recently suspended Sky News for spreading COVID misinformation.</p>
<p>Instead of confronting the paradox, the Australian parliament seems content to outsource to the global media platforms control over how our democratic freedoms are governed. Neither of the major parties has shown the slightest interest in engaging with this problem.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166663/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The maverick MP has made no bones about his plan to use Palmer’s considerable war chest to spread misinformation about COVID – and it’s in democracy’s interest that he be stopped.Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1597752021-05-10T18:51:22Z2021-05-10T18:51:22ZCOVID-19 upended Americans’ sense of individualism and invited us to embrace interconnectedness – an idea from Greek philosopher Epicurus<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398390/original/file-20210503-17-1yk8eaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3994%2C2682&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nothing demonstrates our reliance on each other like a highly contagious disease.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jeymy-mendoza-hugs-her-mother-maria-jimenez-as-they-wait-in-news-photo/1232461504">Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ability to <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-nonsense_n_5b1ed024e4b0bbb7a0e037d4">lift oneself up by their own bootstraps</a> has long been <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/4/17759590/happiness-fantasy-capitalism-culture-carl-cederstrom">celebrated in the United States</a>. This admiration of self-reliance derives from the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke, who argued that <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/">individuals are fully accountable for themselves because they alone own their bodies</a> – a kind of “self-ownership.”</p>
<p>Locke’s theory of self-ownership continues to inform how individuals in modern societies perceive themselves as capable of choosing and acting freely and independently, motivated by their own intentions. </p>
<p>However, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6GBSQXoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">as a scholar of 18th-century British literature and culture</a>, I am aware that some of Locke’s contemporaries challenged his portrayal of the fixed and ownable self, arguing that individuals are made up of constantly moving atoms and therefore fluid and prone to being transformed.</p>
<p>This idea, which came from the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, may prove valuable and persuasive as societies struggle to recover from the devastation of COVID-19. </p>
<h2>Origins of self-reliance</h2>
<p>John Locke presented his view of self-ownership in his “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm">Second Treatise of Government</a>.” The treatise, published in 1689, was highly influential not only in England but also in the U.S. </p>
<p>The Founding Fathers adopted Locke’s portrayal of “life, liberty and property” as universal, inalienable rights, and his claim that government must attain the consent of the governed. These principles would, in 1776, <a href="https://www.ushistory.org/gov/2.asp">inform the Declaration of Independence</a>.</p>
<p>In a chapter on property, Locke asserts that “every man has a property in his own person, [which] nobody has any right to but himself.” This serves as the foundation for all personal rights within his political philosophy.</p>
<p>Confronted by the COVID-19 pandemic, though, individuals have been forced to reckon with the fragility of their self-ownership. How can one presume to have a property in their own person if the boundaries of this property are so readily breached by a deadly virus?</p>
<h2>Modern Epicureans</h2>
<p>Epicurus offered an unflinching theory of the cosmos that not only maintained that all existence is made up of atoms but also denied divine presence and insisted on death as the end of the self. The 17th and 18th centuries saw his ideas return in what has been called “The Epicurean Revival.” This revival was fueled in part by the new popularity of the ancient Roman philosopher Lucretius’ book-length poem, “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/">On the Nature of Things</a>,” from the first century B.C.</p>
<p>Lucretius presents <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/">Epicurus’ philosophy</a> – which promoted pleasure, tranquility and “the good life” – in exquisite verse, making it accessible and entertaining.</p>
<p>A contributor to the Epicurean revival, the poet and devout Calvinist <a href="https://earlymodern.web.ox.ac.uk/works-lucy-hutchinson">Lucy Hutchinson</a>, produced the first <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarlyeditions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/9780199693832.book.1/actrade-9780199693832-book-1">translation of Lucretius into English</a>, and incorporated Epicurus’ theory of the atomic cosmos into her biblical epic “<a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Order+and+Disorder-p-9780631220602">Order and Disorder</a>” in 1679. </p>
<p>Whereas Locke portrays the self as an object to be owned and therefore fixed, Hutchinson reveals the self to be fluid, prone to being molded and transformed by external forces such as other people or new social or environmental events. It is also porous and, with the constant movement of atoms, perpetually penetrated by the atoms of other bodies. </p>
<p>Instead of insisting on the integrity and autonomy of the self, as Locke does, Hutchinson turns her reader’s attention to the interconnectedness of selves. She portrays how, because individuals constantly undergo change, ultimately culminating in their death, they are inseparable from one another as well as from the environment.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398406/original/file-20210503-23-1v72jun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Black woman wearng glasses and a green hat signs a poster." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398406/original/file-20210503-23-1v72jun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398406/original/file-20210503-23-1v72jun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398406/original/file-20210503-23-1v72jun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398406/original/file-20210503-23-1v72jun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398406/original/file-20210503-23-1v72jun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398406/original/file-20210503-23-1v72jun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/398406/original/file-20210503-23-1v72jun.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gwendolyn Brooks after a poetry reading in 1997.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/poet-1-bv-416-valencia-pulitzer-prize-winning-poet-news-photo/569157541">Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘We are each other’s business’</h2>
<p>Ironically, at the same time that the pandemic has required people to socially distance and remain within their “bubbles” or “pods,” it has also obliged individuals to recognize how profoundly connected they are to others. Nothing attests to humans’ porous nature <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/1261/ContagiousCultures-Carriers-and-the-Outbreak">like a highly contagious disease</a>. </p>
<p>A person’s ability to evade the virus is tied to their community’s willingness to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-wear-face-masks-in-public-heres-what-the-research-shows-135623">wear masks</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-people-need-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-in-order-to-stop-the-coronavirus-152071">be vaccinated</a>, as well as address underlying inequities such as in <a href="https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-021-00943-x/index.html">housing and health care</a>. There’s also <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22327548/covid-19-grief-bereavement-loss">new recognition</a> of how hard it is for people to pull themselves together when it feels like the world is falling apart around them. </p>
<p>[<em>Explore the intersection of faith, politics, arts and culture.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-explore">Sign up for This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<p>It is likely that people will nevertheless cling to John Locke’s idea of selfhood as self-ownership, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/prehistory-of-possessive-individualism/6985F24250821FF6A4D62E6F30FEE638">so fundamental it is to American democracy</a>. However, for societies to be better prepared not only to cope with future disasters but also to recover from this one, I believe a different view of the self is needed – one that takes into account just how much one’s own health depends on the health of others. </p>
<p>Like it or not, humans are atomically entangled with their environments and with one another. As the American poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gwendolyn-brooks">Gwendolyn Brooks</a> writes in a <a href="https://poets.org/poem/paul-robeson">poem about singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson</a>, “We are each other’s harvest. We are each other’s business. We are each other’s magnitude and bond.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159775/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristin Girten does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A British literature scholar explains how philosopher John Locke’s theory of selfhood will not help the pandemic recovery, if individuals fail to see themselves as interconnected.Kristin Girten, Associate Professor of English, University of Nebraska OmahaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1417672020-07-08T12:18:09Z2020-07-08T12:18:09ZLeaders like Trump fail if they cannot speak the truth and earn trust<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346111/original/file-20200707-194409-13ise6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C33%2C4488%2C2702&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump at the Tulsa campaign rally, where he said he had slowed down COVID-19 testing to keep the numbers low.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-arrives-at-a-campaign-rally-at-the-news-photo/1251044223?adppopup=true">Win McNamee/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During a <a href="https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/dr-fauci-cdc-director-redfield-testimony-transcript-for-senate-committee-on-health-education-labor-and-pensions">recent Senate committee</a> hearing on the COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers he was concerned about “a lack of trust of authority, a lack of trust in government.”</p>
<p>He had reason to be worried. The Pew Center reported that July 7 <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/">only 17% of people</a> in the U.S. have confidence in government to do the right thing. Never in the history of their surveys, which began in 1958, has that confidence been so low. </p>
<p>Why is trust so low and why does that matter, especially during a crisis – and especially during this crisis?</p>
<h2>No playbook</h2>
<p>The dilemma of leadership in modern democracy has long been the focus of my scholarship and teaching. I have asked what <a href="https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/the-leadership-dilemma-in-modern-democracy-9781848442542.html">qualities and virtues</a> leaders need to preside over a government of, by and for the people. If it’s a challenging topic, it is also one never lacking for material. The current era points especially to the importance of trust for effective and legitimate leadership in democracies. </p>
<p>The story begins with a basic principle of democracy: Leaders cannot do whatever they please. </p>
<p>The drafters of the United States Constitution assumed that anyone with power would always have the opportunity – and often the temptation – to abuse it. To protect society from unruly rulers, they set up an obstacle course of elaborate procedures, checks and balances, separated powers and a <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/Power-and-Constraint/">stringent rule of law</a> that applied to everyone, even those who wrote the laws. </p>
<p>In this system, inefficiency and complexity became virtues. Deliberation trumped dispatch. </p>
<p>It isn’t easy for leaders to act, and it is not supposed to be.</p>
<p>That’s a problem during a crisis. Emergencies require swift, decisive steps, sometimes improvised and often pushing the boundaries of formal authority. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>There’s no playbook, and those hurdles designed to prevent leaders from doing bad things may now prevent them from doing necessary things. </p>
<p>Even <a href="https://history.hanover.edu/texts/locke/j-l2-001.html">John Locke</a>, the 17th-century British philosopher so influential in the American approach to accountability and limited government, understood that stuff happens. And when it does, the machinery of government may prove too slow and cumbersome. </p>
<p>With regret but cold realism, Locke conceded that when severe threats appear, “There is a latitude left to the executive power, to do many things of choice <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=PuzBAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=%E2%80%9CThere+is+a+latitude+left+to+the+executive+power,+to+do+many+things+of+choice+which+the+laws+do+not+prescribe.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=hMrF_Z3UVm&sig=ACfU3U26R3wIQ4UQw1UcHzs83q7a0sVtPQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiNgLOIrrnqAhUZl3IEHZvKBNMQ6AEwAnoECAYQAQ">which the laws do not prescribe</a>.”</p>
<h2>Discretion granted, trust needed</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346116/original/file-20200707-194396-1oeo0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346116/original/file-20200707-194396-1oeo0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346116/original/file-20200707-194396-1oeo0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346116/original/file-20200707-194396-1oeo0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346116/original/file-20200707-194396-1oeo0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346116/original/file-20200707-194396-1oeo0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346116/original/file-20200707-194396-1oeo0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346116/original/file-20200707-194396-1oeo0a9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">German leader Angela Merkel’s cool, measured and rational approach inspires confidence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/german-chancellor-angela-merkel-puts-on-a-face-mask-with-news-photo/1224446126?adppopup=true">John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>That’s precisely when trust becomes critical. </p>
<p>The discretion granted to democratic leaders in times of crisis – the room they have to maneuver – depends entirely on how much the people trust them. And that depends on their competency, honesty and commitment to the public interest.</p>
<p>One of Dwight Eisenhower’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Age_of_Eisenhower.html?id=IIbOtwEACAAJ">biographers</a> explains that discipline was central to his leadership style. Eisenhower leaned heavily on experts and had the patience and persistence to navigate the complex machinery of government. Sometimes that made him appear cautious, but few questioned his competence. </p>
<p>Today German Chancellor Angela Merkel embodies the same set of skills, a cool, measured and rational approach that <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/05/those-who-have-known-angela-merkel-describe-her-rise-to-prominence/">inspires confidence</a>. High among her leadership qualities is a projection of competence, no doubt enhanced by Germany’s success responding to the pandemic. </p>
<p>The Financial Times political columnist Gideon Rachman wonders if the pandemic will ultimately be a setback for populist leaders such as Boris Johnson in Great Britain, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States. They seem thrilled by the theater of politics but bored by the details of governing. As their countries suffer some of the worst effects of the pandemic, <a href="https://on.ft.com/38iD9IU">Rachman believes</a> citizens will rediscover the value of sheer competence. </p>
<h2>Honesty and the public interest</h2>
<p>Telling the truth also earns trust. </p>
<p>But honesty is more than just conveying basic facts. It is the capacity to explain the crisis, the sacrifice required and the path to a solution. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346118/original/file-20200707-194413-19jsj2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346118/original/file-20200707-194413-19jsj2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346118/original/file-20200707-194413-19jsj2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346118/original/file-20200707-194413-19jsj2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346118/original/file-20200707-194413-19jsj2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346118/original/file-20200707-194413-19jsj2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346118/original/file-20200707-194413-19jsj2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346118/original/file-20200707-194413-19jsj2v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During his ‘fireside chats,’ President Franklin Roosevelt’s calm, clear and accessible explanations about the challenges of the Depression were instrumental in reassuring the nation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-politician-and-the-32nd-president-of-the-united-news-photo/3090500?adppopup=true">MPI/Getty images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/search/result?sg=792dc03b-5dbc-473a-b77b-f600595802b7&sp=1&sr=1&url=%2Fhow-the-fireside-chat-provided-a-model-for-calming-the-nation-that-president-trump-failed-to-follow-133473">Roosevelt during the Depression</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30934629">Churchill during World War II</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/24/can-we-learn-covid-19-like-john-f-kennedy-did-cuban-missile-crisis/">Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis</a> and <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/gwbush/foreign-affairs">Bush in the aftermath of 9/11</a> (at least the immediate aftermath) were granted considerable discretion because they accurately described and credibly interpreted the challenge facing the people.</p>
<p>In the current crisis, <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/09/doctors-fume-at-government-response-to-coronavirus-pandemic/">medical professionals have told the inconvenient truths</a> about the pandemic. Political leaders at the national level have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/25/hydroxychloroquine-false-hope-trump/">offered false hopes and misleading information</a>. That is why <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/upshot/coronavirus-americans-trust-experts.html">trust in medical professionals</a> in the United States far exceeds trust in elected officials. </p>
<p>Finally, trust is given when leaders act in the public interest, not their own self-interest. </p>
<p>Perhaps the most damning indictment in <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-06-19/bolton-book-tells-all-about-trump-except-what-makes-him-tick">John Bolton’s book</a> about his time in the Trump administration was this assessment of the president: “I am hard-pressed to identify a significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/upshot/poll-trump-defectors-2020-election.html">One 2016 Trump voter</a> explained his recent change of heart even more bluntly: “It was like this dude is just in it for himself. I thought he was supposed to be for the people.” </p>
<p>If that perception becomes widespread, it will deplete whatever stock of trust citizens have left for the president. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/04/11/public-trust-in-government-1958-2019/">Those Pew measures of trust</a> are fundamental expressions of whether citizens believe leaders will forsake their own immediate interests to serve a public interest.</p>
<p>Dr. Fauci is right. A solution to the pandemic requires testing, contact tracing, masks, social distancing and ultimately a vaccine. It also requires leaders who are competent, honest and committed to the public interest – leaders who are trustworthy. </p>
<p>The absence of trust jeopardizes an effective response to a health crisis. But it also creates a political crisis, a loss of faith in democracy as a way to govern ourselves. Public health in the U.S. is at stake. So is the health of democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141767/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kenneth P. Ruscio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The absence of trust in a nation’s leader and government jeopardizes an effective response to a health crisis. It also creates a political crisis, a loss of faith in democracy.Kenneth P. Ruscio, Senior Distinguished Lecturer, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1312662020-02-27T15:52:05Z2020-02-27T15:52:05ZWhy philosophy is an ideal travel companion for adventurous minds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317617/original/file-20200227-24701-11g0l3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C0%2C2466%2C1646&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AVA Bitter via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2019, there were <a href="https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284421152">1.4 billion international tourist arrivals</a> globally – and, given that the planet only holds <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/">7.7 billion humans</a>, this figure alone suggests that a lot of us are travelling. The World Tourism Organization <a href="https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284421152">reports</a> two major motivations for this – “travel to change”: the quest for local experiences, authenticity, transformation and “travel to show”: the desire for Instagramable moments and destinations.</p>
<p>I think both trends are fuelled by curiosity about the unknown, the unfamiliar. Humans have always looked for new experiences, ways to live, things to show to others. Travel magazines are strewn with articles about visiting “<a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2020/01/why-travel-2020-experience-overlooked-destinations-want-your-attention">overlooked</a>” and “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/19095928-3eaa-11ea-b84f-a62c46f39bc2">unknown</a>” places – and this curiosity has a long history. </p>
<p>Throughout his <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14363">Antarctic explorations</a>, Apsley Cherry-Garrard yearns for “unknown” places. Mary Kingsley describes the “sheer good pleasure” of canoeing down an “unknown” <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5891">West African</a> river by moonlight, and delights in places “not down” on maps. A character in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness describes how “inviting” the “blank spaces on the earth” seem and tells us about his hankering for “the biggest, the most blank”.</p>
<p>Philosophy can also be about exploring the unknown. In one of his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SM2AzN_ZlmIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=berkeley+dialogues&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_lfXolJznAhXqVBUIHePyBcEQ6AEIPjAC#v=onepage&q&f=false">groundbreaking books</a> on idealism, 18th-century Irish philosopher George Berkeley likened his investigations to a “long Voyage”, involving difficult travel across “wild Mazes of Philosophy”. Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume offers similar reflections halfway through his most radical sceptical work <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-L4IAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=hume+treatise+of+human+nature&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9p-bWlJznAhWRYsAKHeFOCmoQ6AEIMTAB#v=onepage&q&f=false">A Treatise of Human Nature</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317305/original/file-20200226-24651-g6x3v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317305/original/file-20200226-24651-g6x3v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317305/original/file-20200226-24651-g6x3v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317305/original/file-20200226-24651-g6x3v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317305/original/file-20200226-24651-g6x3v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317305/original/file-20200226-24651-g6x3v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317305/original/file-20200226-24651-g6x3v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Travels on a ‘boundless ocean’: Scottish philosopher David Hume.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PrakichTreetasayuth via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He imagines himself as a sailor who has struck shallow water, narrowly escaping shipwreck. Safety tempts him to remain perched on the rocks, rather than venturing out onto “that boundless ocean, which runs out into immensity”. Yet Hume decides he will put out to sea again, in the same “leaky weather-beaten vessel”.</p>
<h2>Wild mazes of thought</h2>
<p>The “philosophy of travel” isn’t a thing. It isn’t the subject of lecture courses, or conferences – there are no lists of great philosophical travellers. But, as I argue in my new book <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/019883540X?pf_rd_p=f20e70b1-67f9-48d1-8c78-ba616030b420&pf_rd_r=TDTYNR8TNG2J459STQ13">The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad</a>, travel and philosophy have enjoyed a quiet love affair for centuries.</p>
<p>Travellers and philosophers can both aim at pushing the limits of their knowledge – at seeing how the world is. Adventurous travellers covet new places – even Earth’s unexplored oceans and planets around distant stars. Radical philosophers crafts new questions and shake old assumptions. What is time? Or matter? Or goodness?</p>
<p>You might think wishing for the unknown is the only thing philosophy and travel have in common. Travel involves trains, passports, luggage. Philosophy involves books, ethics, bearded Greeks. But despite their differences, travel and philosophy are tangled together. Travel has affected philosophy, and philosophy has affected travel.</p>
<p>Travel can help philosophers develop new questions. For example, 17th-century European travellers began bringing home, en masse, reports of foreign customs and beliefs. John Locke, the “father of liberalism” – and a voracious reader of travel books – discussed practices that Europeans found shocking. His <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pDNIAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=locke+essay+concerning+human+understanding&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRgc7ClZznAhXSgVwKHas_DmsQ6AEIMTAB#v=onepage&q=locke%20essay%20concerning%20human%20understanding&f=false">Essay Concerning Human Understanding</a> describes cannibalism among peoples in Georgia, the Caribbean and Peru; the immodest sex lives of Turkish saints; and atheism running rampant throughout China and Thailand. </p>
<p>Some of these reports were erroneous: reports of cannibalism <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Everyone_Eats.html?id=3xWt_kWk6L8C">were exaggerated</a>, while – even then – China and Thailand had long religious traditions. But it was becoming clear that people across the planet disagree about ethics and religion. Locke used these disagreements to raise a philosophical question. Are there any innate ideas that all humans are born knowing? (For Locke, the answer was “no”.)</p>
<h2>New questions</h2>
<p>Travel is still prompting new questions today. What are the ethics of doom tourism, to places affected by climate change? Can we imagine what other, non-human minds are like? How might space travel affect us?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317307/original/file-20200226-24668-12z7jg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317307/original/file-20200226-24668-12z7jg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317307/original/file-20200226-24668-12z7jg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317307/original/file-20200226-24668-12z7jg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317307/original/file-20200226-24668-12z7jg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317307/original/file-20200226-24668-12z7jg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317307/original/file-20200226-24668-12z7jg2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Kingsley: English explorer who helped map West Africa and discovered new fish species.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">rook76 via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just as travel has moved philosophy forward, philosophy has sometimes pushed travel practices in new directions. Every so often, a new philosophical idea impels travel to particular places, or in particular ways. For example, American literary scholar Marjorie Hope Nicolson’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Aw8j8JZhxpYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Marjorie+Hope+Nicolson%E2%80%99s+book+Mountain+Gloom,+Mountain+Glory&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjXx9_NlZznAhXhUBUIHe_RDUgQ6AEIKzAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">Mountain Gloom, Mountain Glory</a> argues that, from the late 17th century, a new theory of space incited tourists to visit mountains. On this “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-space-the-300-year-old-philosophical-battle-that-is-still-raging-today-85628">Absolute</a>” theory, space is God’s immensity or infinite presence.</p>
<p>Nicolson argues this led to people perceiving big, infinite landscapes such as mountains as divine. “Great cathedrals of the earth” – as the Victorian thinker John Ruskin wrote of the Alps – “altars of snow”. Once mountains had become cathedrals, everybody wanted to visit them.</p>
<p>Similarly, the philosophy of wilderness set out in American philosopher Henry Thoreau’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B_pKAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Henry+Thoreau+Walden&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF4O7xlZznAhXJUBUIHSgxDRgQ6wEILDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">Walden</a> started a craze for solitary wilderness travel – and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/what-it-means-that-urban-hipsters-like-staring-at-pictures-of-cabins/254495/">cabin porn</a>.</p>
<p>What counts as unknown depends on your starting point. For British sailor James Cook, Alaska and Australia were “new” lands – but their indigenous inhabitants knew them well. Roman Syria would have been unfamiliar to Chinese explorer Gan Ying, but not to the Syrians. Sometimes journeys explore places unknown to all human beings: the depths of <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/son-doong-cave-vietnam-expedition/index.html">Son Doong caves</a>, the under-snow <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/feb/24/antarctica-mountains">mountains of Antarctica</a>, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/05/space-race-moon-mars-asteroids-commercial-launches">Moon and Mars</a>.</p>
<p>Philosophers can also venture into areas of thought that are new to them but familiar to others. I would have this experience if I began researching medieval German philosophy, or contemporary Chinese philosophy. And philosophers can attempt to strike out into wholly new areas of thought. I think this is when philosophy and travel are at their most fascinating: when they look to the borders of what humans do not know.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Thomas receives funding from the AHRC.</span></em></p>Travel and philosophy have enjoyed a quiet love affair for centuries.Emily Thomas, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1170852019-05-16T21:01:05Z2019-05-16T21:01:05ZAre we witnessing the death of liberal democracy?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274456/original/file-20190514-60560-hzguyf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3500%2C2331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the White House on May 13, 2019. Strongmen like Orbán are increasingly gaining ground as the death knell sounds for liberal democracy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>All over the world, alarm bells are ringing for democracy. Everywhere we find strongmen in charge, enraged citizens and a desperate search for explanations and remedies. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-philippines-midterm-elections-duterte-20190514-story.html">Rodrigo Duterte</a>’s Philippines. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/13/trump-latest-viktor-orban-hungary-prime-minister-white-house">Viktor Orbán</a>’s Hungary. <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-to-repel-netanyahu-s-attack-on-democracy-the-israeli-left-must-find-its-inner-rage-1.7241480">Benjamin Netanyahu</a>’s Israel. Maybe something’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/13/american-conservatives-are-new-fellow-travelers/?utm_term=.c5b2453d86e2">even going wrong in the United States.</a></p>
<p>In 1992, <a href="https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/francis-fukuyama-on-identity-dignity-and-threats-to-liberal-democracy">political theorist Francis Fukuyama</a> declared there was finally a solution to the riddle: “Who should rule, and why?” The answer: liberal democracy.</p>
<p>A generation later, Fukuyama’s declaration is not wearing well.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the structural flaw that would hobble liberal democracy had actually been identified 30 years earlier, <a href="https://doi.org/10.7202/1032806ar">in a study called <em>Possessive Individualism</em></a> by University of Toronto political scientist Crawford Brough Macpherson.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274457/original/file-20190514-60545-142mb2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An undated photo of Macpherson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creative Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He pointed out that liberal democracy was a contradiction in terms. From the 16th century to the 20th, classical liberals of the British tradition had argued for the rights of the “individual.” In theory and practice, though, they only counted a person as an individual (almost always male) who had command over himself and his possessions, including human ones.</p>
<p>For all his inspiring words about government created by and responsive to “the people,” supposedly liberal philosopher John Locke, <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/does-lockes-entanglement-with-slavery-undermine-his-philosophy">investor in the slave trade,</a> had a narrow view of who got to be considered a rights-bearing individual.</p>
<p>The key was property. Society was little more than an agreement among the privileged to respect each other’s property rights.</p>
<h2>Hardly pro-democracy</h2>
<p>These liberals were not democrats, but after the rise of industrial capitalism, they had to respond to growing populations of working people with their own, often democratic, ideas. Generations of liberals, <a href="https://mises.org/library/john-stuart-mill-and-new-liberalism">with John Stuart Mill at the helm</a>, struggled to reconcile their assumptions about free-standing individuals who owned property with the democratic demands of the exploited and excluded.</p>
<p>Until the 1960s, a softer, gentler liberalism seemed to gain ground. The privileges of propertied individuals were preserved, but at a price: welfare programs, unions, public education, housing and health and, worst of all, taxes.</p>
<p>Still, liberals ultimately had to choose between democracy and capitalism. They might find themselves defending both the rights of workers to unionize and of factory owners to fire them, for example. Which should prevail? Macpherson feared the fall-back answer for liberals, whatever their democratic posturing, would often be the owners.</p>
<p>Macpherson’s critics painted him as “yesterday’s thinker.” Didn’t he realize, they asked, that liberals had found a sweet spot — harmonizing the public and the private, the people and the propertied, the many and the few?</p>
<h2>Macpherson’s prescience</h2>
<p>Today, more than three decades after his death, Macpherson’s diagnosis — that the acquisitive drive of unfettered capitalism poses a stark challenge to liberty and democracy — seems very prescient.</p>
<p>Liberal democracy has fallen into a world crisis.</p>
<p>Liberal democrats were working to make democracy safe for property, but to their right were hard-nosed businessmen, economists and politicians working on an extreme makeover of liberal democracy that came to be called “neo-liberalism.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755">What exactly is neoliberalism?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Outraged by infringements on capital, determined to roll back socialism and seeing the market as near-infallible, this determined cadre of conservative intellectuals created a movement of reactionary resistance.</p>
<p>Regulations impeding the free flow of capital were demolished. Once-powerful labour movements were eviscerated.</p>
<p>Liberated from effective regulation, financial institutions developed global chains of indebtedness and speculation which, even after the crisis of 2007, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/06/decade-after-financial-meltdown-underlying-problems-not-fixed">have attained pervasive influence</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-americas-labor-unions-are-about-to-die-69575">Why America's labor unions are about to die</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After three decades of pious liberal hand-wringing, the world is set <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-un/global-temperatures-on-track-for-3-5-degree-rise-by-2100-u-n-idUSKCN1NY186">to warm by three to five degrees</a> Celsius by 2100, a catastrophe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/ending-climate-change-end-capitalism">attributable to unregulated capitalism.</a></p>
<h2>Liberal toolbox of no use</h2>
<p>The propertied patterns underlying these civilization-threatening developments cannot be grasped, let alone resisted, using a liberal toolbox.</p>
<p>In the possessive individualism of classical liberalism, we find the seeds of today’s democracy crisis. A devotion to property over people is democracy in chains and a planet in peril.</p>
<p>Countless people experience the precariousness wrought by this extreme makeover of the world’s liberal order. A neoliberal world, by design, offers minimal security —in employment, social stability, even in reliable networks of knowledge helping us reach reasoned understandings about the world in the company of our fellow citizens.</p>
<p>People longing for security confront, instead, an unintelligible, turbulent world seemingly bent on destroying any prospect of it. Insecurity breeds acute and often angry anxiety. <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2105%2FAJPH.2017.304187">It prompts a search for sanctuary</a> in anti-depressants, opioids and alcohol. A deliberately starved state sector leaves only a few short steps between you and social and economic ruin.</p>
<p>Even the reasoned consideration of factual evidence recedes in a neoliberal world where every institution — newspapers, universities, the state itself — is rethinking itself in neoliberal terms. This very precariousness is represented, not as culturally and psychologically damaging, but as freedom itself.</p>
<p>In this climate, a pervasive culture of militarism offers beleaguered individuals at least the solace of an imagined national community. Our daily work may be regimented, pointless and insecure, but at least we can imagine, beyond it, a world of collective noble endeavour and selfless courage in defence of the nation.</p>
<p>In this militarized culture, many people are plainly looking for strongmen who can stand up for the nation. And around the world, including our corner of it, they’re finding them.</p>
<h2>Responding to nationalism</h2>
<p>The sovereign political paradox of our time is that a global army of people — precarious, harried, anxious, angry, disenfranchised and above all divested of all social rights to reasonably secure and prosperous livelihoods — <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/political-science/2018/nov/20/why-is-populism-suddenly-so-sexy-the-reasons-are-many">is responding avidly to nationalist movements</a> that, on closer inspection, are likely offer them more extreme versions of the hardships they are already enduring.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274458/original/file-20190514-60537-1ojl7wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nationalism is gaining in popularity. In this April 2016 photo, a man walks during a protest in Stone Mountain, Ga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/John Bazemore)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Macpherson challenge — to liberate democracy from its neoliberal chains by rethinking property relations right down to their foundations — is daunting, but not unprecedented.</p>
<p>There will be conflict, pain and sacrifice in the long revolution to retrieve democracy and the liberties once sincerely defended by liberals. There will also be excitement and energy. The 21st century is already echoing with cries of dynamic, often youthful participants in such struggles, as they challenge the extreme makeover that has so convulsed contemporary life and placed liberal democracy in question.</p>
<p>They know the hour is late. The stakes could not be higher.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian McKay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Liberal democracy is in trouble, and the seeds of its demise can be found in the property rights so cherished by so-called liberals generations ago.Ian McKay, Director of the Wilson Institute for Canadian History, McMaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1145482019-04-07T14:58:36Z2019-04-07T14:58:36ZIn Québec, Christian liberalism becomes the religious authority<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269641/original/file-20190416-147505-106d0t7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault on the campaign trail last September before the election that saw his party form a majority government. </span> </figcaption></figure><p>The Québec government is proposing a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-laicity-secularism-bill-1.5075547">secularism law</a> to prohibit any new public servants in a position of authority — including teachers, lawyers and police officers — from wearing religious symbols while at work.</p>
<p>The bill incorporates the language of the law from last year’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/quebecs-niqab-ban-uses-womens-bodies-to-bolster-right-wing-extremism-86055">Bill 62,</a> which prohibits people from wearing face coverings when they receive government services — including health care and day care services and using public transit.</p>
<p>Bill 21, <a href="http://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-21-42-1.html"><em>An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State</em></a>, follows laws previously put forth by Québec’s governments — the Liberal Party in 2010 and 2017 and the Parti Québécois in 2013. But parts of these law were suspended after court challenges.</p>
<p>This time, the provincial government invoked the “notwithstanding clause” to ensure it holds up against <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/quebec-judge-stays-controversial-face-cover-law-bill-62/article37169426/">constitutional scrutiny</a>. The clause allows provincial or federal authorities to override sections of Canada’s Charter of Rights.</p>
<p>The bill also proposes to permanently amend the <a href="http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/C-12">Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms</a> to accommodate state <em>laïcité</em>, the French principle of strict separation between church and state.</p>
<h2>Christian culture as the norm</h2>
<p>In my research at Carleton University, I have been tracking what I call “Christian liberalism.” I look at the role of religion within the liberal democratic state — and how Christian frameworks, norms and values are embedded into the history of law and public policy in the United States and Canada. </p>
<p>At first glance, the strict secularism (or <em>laïcité</em>) of Bill 21 appears intolerant of religion in all its public forms. But the neutral and secular language of the bill presumes an invisible Christian default when outlining the rules around public expressions of religiosity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266916/original/file-20190401-177196-gtlf01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C8%2C2937%2C2187&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266916/original/file-20190401-177196-gtlf01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266916/original/file-20190401-177196-gtlf01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266916/original/file-20190401-177196-gtlf01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266916/original/file-20190401-177196-gtlf01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266916/original/file-20190401-177196-gtlf01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266916/original/file-20190401-177196-gtlf01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quebec Premier Francois Legault last week as his government voted on Bill 21. The crucifix behind him would likely disappear if the legislation is passed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/charter-of-quebec-values-would-ban-religious-symbols-for-public-workers-1.1699315">Charter of Values</a> put forth by the Parti Québécois in 2013 proposed banning “conspicuous” religious symbols from the public service sector. But it drew a line between “subtle” religious expressions (like a crucifix necklace) and “overt” ones (like the Islamic headscarf). </p>
<p>The language of <em>conspicuousness</em> reveals that what is determined to be permissible religious expression is a “familiar” and historically embedded Christian understanding. </p>
<h2>Constitutional threats</h2>
<p>The use of the notwithstanding clause and the proposal to amend the province’s <a href="http://legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/C-12">Human Rights Charter</a> pose real constitutional threats. Given the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-rise-in-hate-crimes-calls-for-a-unified-response">rise in hate crimes targeting racialized and religious minority groups in Canada</a>, the 2017 terrorist attack on a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/quebec-city-mosque-shooting-what-we-know-so-far/article33826078/">Québec City mosque</a> and the recent attack in <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-hypocritical-media-coverage-of-the-new-zealand-terror-attacks-113713">Christchurch, New Zealand</a>, the suspension of religious freedom rights should raise alarms. </p>
<p>Bill 21, like the previous secularism bills, <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/religious-symbols-civil-liberties-muslim-groups-vow-to-fight-bill-21">disproportionately targets religious minorities.</a> </p>
<p>According to the non-profit human rights group the National Council of Canadian Muslims, <a href="https://www.nccm.ca/nccm-says-caq-governments-so-called-secularism-bill-creates-second-class-citizens/">the bill amplifies anti-Muslim sentiment</a>. Many news <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/allison-hanes-secularism-and-the-city">op-eds express the same view</a>: that the bill could intensify <a href="https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/04/01/proposed-secularism-law-exposes-divisions-in-quebec.html?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMedia&utm_campaign=500pm&utm_campaign_id=Opinion&utm_content=HebertProposedSecularismDivisions">polarizing attitudes</a> in Québec. </p>
<h2>Liberal tolerance</h2>
<p>The western liberal notion of “tolerance” comes from the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke, who considered religious pluralism beneficial to a healthy democracy. Locke’s ideas, grounded in Christian moral reasoning, became the basis for religious freedom protections embedded in liberal democratic constitutions.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/A-Letter-Concerning-Toleration"><em>A Letter Concerning Toleration</em></a> published in 1689, Locke argued that the state should stay out of the business of regulating religious expressions. He advocated for the inclusion of religion in public, so long as it did not contradict state laws. He extended religious tolerance to Christian churches, and also Pagans, Muslims and Jewish people.</p>
<p>But Locke’s understanding of tolerance was rooted in Christian logic and informed by his Calvinist upbringing. He held to the idea of “the true religion” and did not believe atheists should receive the same tolerance. </p>
<p><a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8306.html">Wendy Brown, professor of political science at the University of California Berkeley,</a> argues that Locke’s premise is culturally condescending: it reproduces a hierarchical relationship between those who do the tolerating and those who must be tolerated. </p>
<p>The use of terms like “neutrality” and “secularism” along with Bill 21’s “laicity” employ the same rhetoric of tolerance espoused by Locke. </p>
<h2>Religious and cultural heritage</h2>
<p>Despite <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quiet-revolution">the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s</a>, when the role of the Catholic Church was considerably diminished, <a href="https://theconversation.com/islamophobia-in-quebec-an-ideology-rooted-in-20th-century-imperialism-88245">Québec society retains the cultural residue of Catholicism.</a></p>
<p>The proposed religious symbols bans make special exemptions for expressions that affirm “elements of Québec’s cultural heritage, in particular, its religious cultural heritage.” This wording allows Catholic symbols, like the crucifix hanging in the National Assembly, to remain. Although the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government has <a href="https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/national-assembly-votes-to-remove-crucifix-1.4355860">agreed to move the crucifix</a>, Bill 21 retains this language of exemption. </p>
<p>By putting forward this proposed law, the CAQ positions the state as arbiters of religious authority. They determine which symbols are interpreted as “religious” — and therefore in violation of the law — and which are merely “cultural” expressions of Catholic heritage. </p>
<p>In this way, Christianity remains the invisible cultural default. Unless that default is made visible, Canadian laws will not be able to get beyond the condescending premise of tolerance and move towards genuine inclusion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114548/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Dick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The language of the neutral and secular state in Bill 21, like its precursors, presumes an invisible Christian default for the rules around public expressions of religiosity.Hannah Dick, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1142602019-03-28T10:40:32Z2019-03-28T10:40:32ZDo you have a moral duty to pay taxes?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266190/original/file-20190327-139364-1h2iy6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What can philosophers tell you about paying taxes?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/1040-tax-form-sticky-note-april-381691285"> RomanR/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s tax season. Americans <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2018/04/25/how-much-does-the-average-american-pay-in-taxes/34138615/">will pay an average of US$10,489 in personal taxes</a> – about 14 percent of the average household’s total income.</p>
<p>Most will do so because <a href="https://www.treasury.gov/IRSOB/reports/Documents/IRSOB%20Taxpayer%20Attitude%20Survey%202014.pdf">they think it is their civic duty</a>. Many believe they are morally obliged to obey the law and pay their share. But as tax day approaches, many Americans will <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/12/30/why-americans-hate-paying-taxes/">bemoan their tax bill</a> and complain that it is unfair. </p>
<p>So, how are we to know if paying taxes is the right thing to do? Perhaps philosophy has some clues?</p>
<h2>Reasons to obey the law</h2>
<p>Many philosophers agree that we should obey the law. In his book, “The Crito,” Plato, for example, describes Socrates’ <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html">choice</a> after the Athenian jury sentenced him to death for impiety. Crito, a wealthy friend of Socrates, arranges for him to escape from the prison a night before his execution. Socrates refuses saying he ought to obey the law. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266191/original/file-20190327-139364-1qqyiir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Socrates chose to die rather than disobey the Athenian jury.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/classical-statue-socrates-front-column-664286929">vangelis aragiannis/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html">explaining his decision</a>, Socrates hinted at roughly three reasons why it would be wrong for him to break the law: First, he had chosen to stay in the city for many years despite being at liberty to leave if he did not like the laws. Second, he might hurt other people – by damaging the state if he disobeyed. Finally, he had benefited from the laws in the past. </p>
<p>More recent scholars <a href="https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1689a.pdf">endorse many of these claims</a>. Eighteenth-century philosophers like <a href="https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1689a.pdf">John Locke</a> and <a href="https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/rousseau1762.pdf">Jean-Jacques Rousseau</a> argued that citizens agreed to the law of the state by continuing to live in the place. Locke, for example, <a href="https://earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1689a_2.pdf">held</a> that “if a man owns or enjoys some part of the land under a given government, while that enjoyment lasts he gives his tacit consent to the laws of that government and is obliged to obey them.” </p>
<p>Twentieth-century British philosopher <a href="http://users.ox.ac.uk/%7Eworc0337/authors/r.m.hare.html">R.M. Hare</a> suggests that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/essays-on-political-morality-9780198249948?cc=us&lang=en&">citizens should obey the law</a> to promote good social outcomes. </p>
<p>Another British philosopher of the same era, <a href="http://www2.law.ox.ac.uk/jurisprudence/hart.htm">H.L.A. Hart</a> argued that citizens should comply out of fairness to others who obey. He held that it is <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/HARATA-4">unfair</a>, and therefore wrong to benefit from their actions, without doing the same for them in turn. </p>
<h2>Is there a moral duty to pay taxes?</h2>
<p>Yet it is hard to see why these arguments would give the average citizen a moral responsibility to pay their taxes.</p>
<p>Most of us never consented to the law. We were simply born here. Leaving would be costly, and even the chance to emigrate is dependent on another country’s willingness to accept us. </p>
<p>Given the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270166698_Toward_a_Political_Economy_of_Government_Waste_First_Step_Definitions">amount of government waste</a> and its <a href="https://budget.house.gov/publications/fact-sheet/frequently-asked-questions-about-federal-budget#estimated%20federal%20revenues,%20spending,%20and%20deficits%20for%202018">total budget</a> individual citizens could think that their tax bill is unlikely to make a difference to the services the government can provide. Even if they agree with how the government spends money, they might therefore conclude they have no reason to contribute. After all, one person’s ten thousand dollars is not going to determine whether the military can secure national borders. </p>
<p>The most commonly defended argument from scholars for why one should pay taxes is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00476.x">duty of fair play</a>. Fair play is the notion of reciprocity, the idea that you should not take advantage of others. </p>
<p>As philosophers like <a href="https://politics.virginia.edu/george-klosko/">George Klosko</a> argue, people benefit from their fellow citizens <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0199256209.001.0001/acprof-9780199256204">paying their taxes</a>. </p>
<p>They enjoy the roads that everyone helps pay for, the fire departments they fund. They ought to pay back fellow citizens who benefited them, just like you ought to do something for a friend who gives you a ride to the airport.</p>
<h2>The case against paying taxes</h2>
<p>As a philosopher who studies civic ethics, I have argued in a <a href="https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/beyond-profit-and-politics-reciprocity-and-the-role-of-for-profi/15389232">recent paper</a> that this kind of responsibility still does not explain why one should pay taxes. </p>
<p>The idea that we have to pay your taxes because other people have benefited by paying theirs rests, from my perspective, on a wrongly narrow view of what it means to satisfy one’s duties of reciprocity. All that reciprocity requires is that one should compensate people for the work they have done that benefits us. </p>
<p>Just like we can repay a friend who gives us a ride to the airport by doing something else that benefits them – say, making them dinner or helping them move – so too can we repay our fellow citizens by doing something other than paying our taxes.</p>
<p>Lots of actions benefit your fellow citizens that you might pay for – taking a pay cut to do legally discretionary work to help the environment, volunteering to do policy research, choosing a career in public service over a more financially rewarding line of work, and more. </p>
<p>If you do enough such acts, it could be argued, you would have no duty of reciprocity to pay your taxes. You would already have done enough to compensate your fellow citizens. </p>
<h2>Why pay taxes</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266192/original/file-20190327-139352-fgn6zr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Here’s why you should pay your taxes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-man-doing-paperwork-together-paying-792809188">adriaticfoto/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Given this, the best argument for paying our taxes, as I argue in my paper, is “intellectual humility.” And here is what it means.</p>
<p>Satisfying these duties of reciprocity requires successfully compensating our fellow citizens for all the burdens they took on our behalf. As one can imagine, it is a hard calculation to make. </p>
<p>It is difficult to know if we have done enough. If we choose not to pay taxes because we think we have already repaid our fellow citizens in other ways, we run a strong risk of getting it wrong. </p>
<p>Paying the tax bill is one way of avoiding that risk and making sure we treat our fellow citizens fairly. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would welcome your suggestions. Please email us at <a href="mailto:ethical.questions@theconversation.com">ethical.questions@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brookes Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many Americans are fretting over paying their taxes. A philosopher says the moral question isn’t as much about a duty toward the government, but being fair to fellow tax-paying citizens.Brookes Brown, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Law, Liberty, & Justice Program, Clemson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1111462019-02-05T11:41:17Z2019-02-05T11:41:17ZShould we judge people for their past moral failings?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257094/original/file-20190204-193209-rmp33d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, accompanied by his wife, speaks during a news conference.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Governor-Klan-Blackface/7fce50c15b3d418fb0f784a46ee4596c/8/0">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is facing a controversy after a photograph surfaced from his medical school yearbook showing one person in blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-tip-from-a-concerned-citizen-helps-a-reporter-land-the-scoop-of-a-lifetime/2019/02/03/e30762ea-2765-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html?utm_term=.357a66cd8ac4">media alleged</a> the governor was the one in blackface. </p>
<p>Northam, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/va-gov-northams-medical-school-yearbook-page-shows-men-in-blackface-kkk-robe/2019/02/01/517a43ee-265f-11e9-90cd-dedb0c92dc17_story.html?utm_term=.f6c29c01e070">initially apologized</a>, but later said that he did not believe that the photo was of him and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/04/ralph-northam-scandal-virginia-governor-uncertain-future/2763459002/">called it</a> “disgusting, offensive, racist.”</p>
<p>The controversy came just months after Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh, faced <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/kavanaugh-sexual-assault-allegation-dle/index.html">allegations</a> of sexual assault going back to his high school years.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lp2AS3oAAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=1">As a philosopher</a>, I believe these cases raise <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-012-9976-6">two ethical questions</a>. One is the question of moral responsibility for an action at the time it occurred. The second is moral responsibility in the present time for actions of the past. </p>
<p><a href="http://earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1690book2_4.pdf">Most</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Doing_Deserving.html?id=EEl4KgAACAAJ">philosophers</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/An_Essay_on_Moral_Responsibility.html?id=-zvXAAAAMAAJ">seem</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20009933?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">to</a> <a href="http://mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014090.001.0001/upso-9780262014090-chapter-7">think</a> that the two cannot be separated. In other words, moral responsibility for an action, once committed, is set in stone.</p>
<p>I argue that there are reasons to think that moral responsibility can actually change over time – but only under certain conditions.</p>
<h2>Locke on personal identity</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of John Locke.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/63794459@N07/6282628216">Skara kommun/Flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Philosophers implicitly agree that moral responsibility can’t change over time because they think it is a matter of one’s “personal identity.” The 17th-century British philosopher <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/">John Locke</a> was the first to explicitly raise this question. He asked: What makes an individual at one time the very same person as an individual at another time? Is this because both share the same soul, or the same body, or is it something else? </p>
<p>Not only is this, as philosopher <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/KORPI">Carsten Korfmacher</a> notes, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/person-i/">“literally a question of life and death</a>,” but Locke also thought that personal identity was the key to moral responsibility over time. </p>
<p>“Personal identity is the basis for all the right and justice of reward and punishment,” <a href="http://earlymoderntexts.com/authors/locke">he wrote</a>. </p>
<p>Locke believed that individuals deserve blame for a crime committed in the past simply because they are the same person that committed the past crime. From this perspective, a person would still be responsible for any of the alleged actions of a younger self.</p>
<h2>Problems with Locke’s view</h2>
<p>Locke argued that being the same person over time was not a matter of having the same soul or having the same body. It was instead a matter of having the same consciousness over time, which he analyzed in terms of memory. </p>
<p>Thus, in Locke’s view, individuals are responsible for a past wrong act <a href="https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/should-people-be-punished-for-crimes-they-cant-remember-committing-what-john-locke-would-say-about-vernon-madison-auid-1050?access=ALL">so long as they can remember committing it</a>. </p>
<p>While there is clearly something appealing about the idea that memory ties us to the past, it is hard to believe that a person should get off the hook just by forgetting a criminal act. Indeed, <a href="http://jaapl.org/content/7/3/219">some research suggests that violent crime actually induces memory loss</a>.</p>
<p>But, I believe, the problems with Locke’s view run deeper than this. The chief one is that it doesn’t take into consideration other changes in one’s psychological makeup. For example, many of us are inclined to think that the remorseful don’t deserve as much blame for their past wrongs as those who express no regret. But in Locke’s view, the remorseful would still deserve just as much blame for their past crimes because they remain identical with their former selves. </p>
<h2>Responsibility and change</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/harvardreview/content/harvardreview_2012_0018_0001_0109_0132">Some philosophers</a> are beginning to question the assumption that responsibility for actions in the past is just a question of personal identity. Philosopher <a href="https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/departments/philosophy/people/david-shoemaker">David Shoemaker</a>, for example, argues that responsibility doesn’t require identity. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/KHOIBF-2">a recent paper</a> in the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-association">Journal of the American Philosophical Association</a>, my co-author <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oHU097gAAAAJ&hl=en">Benjamin Matheson</a> and I argue that the fact that one has committed a wrong action in the past isn’t enough to guarantee responsibility in the present. Instead, that responsibility depends on whether the person has changed in morally important ways. </p>
<p>Philosophers generally agree that people deserve blame for an action <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/blame/#WheBlaApp">only if the action was performed with a certain state of mind</a>: say, an intention to knowingly commit a crime.</p>
<p>My co-author and I argue that deserving blame in the present for an action in the past depends on whether those same states of mind persist in that person. For example, does the person still have the beliefs, intentions and personality traits that led to the past act in the first place? </p>
<p>If so, then the person hasn’t changed in relevant ways and will continue to deserve blame for the past action. But a person who has changed may not be deserving of blame over time. The reformed murderer Red, played by Morgan Freeman, in the 1994 film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/">“The Shawshank Redemption,”</a> is one of my favorite examples. After decades in the Shawshank Penitentiary, Red the old man hardly resembles the teenager that committed murder. </p>
<h2>How do we judge past misconduct?</h2>
<p>If this is right, then figuring out whether a person deserves blame for a past action is more complex than simply determining if that individual did, in fact, commit the past action. </p>
<p>In the case of Northam, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/02/691018180/democrats-republicans-call-for-virginia-gov-northam-s-resignation">some see his denial</a>, as well as his admission of donning blackface during a dance competition as more evidence of his persisting responsibility. Others, however, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/us/northam-virginia-liberals-race.html">would like</a> the public to look at <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/03/us/racist-photo-northam-blake-analysis/index.html">Northam’s overall track record</a> in fighting against racism and prejudice. In particular, one commentator noted that Northam was forceful in his <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/03/us/racist-photo-northam-blake-analysis/index.html">denunciation of the 2017 Charlottesville white supremacist rally</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/257095/original/file-20190204-193223-gq2mb9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One way to think about past moral failure is – how much has a person changed?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/past-present-future-time-progress-concept-644195590?src=xPW0DROBiHDOay3uL1c93Q-1-26">Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What I would argue is that when confronted with the issue of moral responsibility for actions long since passed, we need to not only consider the nature of the past transgression but also how far and how deeply the individual has changed.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-we-judge-people-for-their-past-moral-failings-103982">first published</a> on Oct. 3, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Khoury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A philosopher argues that moral responsibility for past transgressions can actually change over time. The test lies in how deeply an individual has changed.Andrew Khoury, Instructor of Philosophy, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1039822018-10-03T10:32:26Z2018-10-03T10:32:26ZHow should we judge people for their past moral failings?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239018/original/file-20181002-101576-bfdjtm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The #MeToo movement and more recent allegations against Brett Kavanaugh have posed questions about past conduct.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Supreme-Court-Kavanaugh-MeToo/d404cf1712bc48da99b0251790de864f/5/0">AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/kavanaugh-sexual-assault-allegation-dle/index.html">recent allegations</a> of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have further divided the nation. Among the questions the case raises are some important ethical ones. </p>
<p>Not least among them is the question of moral responsibility for actions long since passed. Particularly in light of the #MeToo movement, which has frequently involved the unearthing of decades old wrongdoing, this question has become a pressing one.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lp2AS3oAAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=1">As a philosopher</a>, I believe this ethical conundrum <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-012-9976-6">involves two issues</a>: one, the question of moral responsibility for an action at the time it occurred. And two, moral responsibility in the present time, for actions of the past. <a href="http://earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1690book2_4.pdf">Most</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Doing_Deserving.html?id=EEl4KgAACAAJ">philosophers</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/An_Essay_on_Moral_Responsibility.html?id=-zvXAAAAMAAJ">seem</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20009933?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">to</a> <a href="http://mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014090.001.0001/upso-9780262014090-chapter-7">think</a> that the two cannot be separated. In other words, moral responsibility for an action, once committed, is set in stone.</p>
<p>I argue that there are reasons to think that moral responsibility can actually change over time – but only under certain conditions.</p>
<h2>Locke on personal identity</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239022/original/file-20181002-101588-1s7ydcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of John Locke.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/63794459@N07/6282628216">Skara kommun/Flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>There is an implicit agreement among philosophers that moral responsibility can’t change over time because they think it is a matter of one’s “personal identity.” The 17th-century British philosopher <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/">John Locke</a> was the first to explicitly raise this question. He asked: What makes an individual at one time the very same person as an individual at another time? Is this because both share the same soul, or the same body, or is it something else? </p>
<p>Not only is this, as philosopher <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/KORPI">Carsten Korfmacher</a> notes, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/person-i/">“literally a question of life and death</a>,” but Locke also thought that personal identity was the key to moral responsibility over time. <a href="http://earlymoderntexts.com/authors/locke">As he wrote,</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Personal identity is the basis for all the right and justice of reward and punishment.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Locke believed that individuals deserve blame for a crime committed in the past simply because they are the same person that committed the past crime. From this perspective, Kavanaugh the 53-year-old would be responsible for any of the alleged actions that he committed as a young adult. </p>
<h2>Problems with Locke’s view</h2>
<p>Locke argued that being the same person over time was not a matter of having the same soul or having the same body. It was instead a matter of having the same consciousness over time, which he analyzed in terms of memory. </p>
<p>Thus, in Locke’s view, individuals are responsible for a past wrong act <a href="https://iainews.iai.tv/articles/should-people-be-punished-for-crimes-they-cant-remember-committing-what-john-locke-would-say-about-vernon-madison-auid-1050?access=ALL">so long as they can remember committing it</a>. </p>
<p>While there is clearly something appealing about the idea that memory ties us to the past, it is hard to believe that a person could get off the hook just by forgetting a criminal act. Indeed, <a href="http://jaapl.org/content/7/3/219">some research suggests that violent crime actually induces memory loss</a>.</p>
<p>But the problems with Locke’s view run deeper than this. The chief one is that it doesn’t take into consideration other changes in one’s psychological makeup. For example, many of us are inclined to think that the remorseful don’t deserve as much blame for their past wrongs as those who express no regret. But if Locke’s view were true, then remorse wouldn’t be relevant. </p>
<p>The remorseful would still deserve just as much blame for their past crimes because they remain identical with their former selves. </p>
<h2>Responsibility and change</h2>
<p>Of late, <a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/harvardreview/content/harvardreview_2012_0018_0001_0109_0132">some philosophers</a> are beginning to question the assumption that responsibility for actions in the past is just a question of personal identity. <a href="https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/departments/philosophy/people/david-shoemaker">David Shoemaker</a>, for example, argues that responsibility doesn’t require identity. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/KHOIBF-2">a forthcoming paper</a> in the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-association">Journal of the American Philosophical Association</a>, my coauthor <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=oHU097gAAAAJ&hl=en">Benjamin Matheson</a> and I argue that the fact that one has committed a wrong action in the past isn’t enough to guarantee responsibility in the present. Instead, this depends on whether or not the person has changed in morally important ways. </p>
<p>Philosophers generally agree that people deserve blame for an action <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/blame/#WheBlaApp">only if the action was performed with a certain state of mind</a>: say, an intention to knowingly commit a crime.</p>
<p>My coauthor and I argue that deserving blame in the present for an action in the past depends on whether those same states of mind persist in that person. For example, does the person still have the beliefs, intentions and personality traits that led to the past act in the first place? </p>
<p>If so, then the person hasn’t changed in relevant ways and will continue to deserve blame for the past action. But a person who has changed may not be deserving of blame over time. The reformed murderer Red, played by Morgan Freeman, in the 1994 film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/">“The Shawshank Redemption,”</a> is one of my favorite examples. After decades in the Shawshank Penitentiary, Red the old man hardly resembles the teenager that committed the murder. </p>
<p>If this is right, then figuring out whether a person deserves blame for a past action is more complex than simply determining if that individual did, in fact, commit the past action. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239020/original/file-20181002-101576-1vd0qiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239020/original/file-20181002-101576-1vd0qiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239020/original/file-20181002-101576-1vd0qiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239020/original/file-20181002-101576-1vd0qiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239020/original/file-20181002-101576-1vd0qiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239020/original/file-20181002-101576-1vd0qiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239020/original/file-20181002-101576-1vd0qiu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brett Kavanaugh giving his opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Supreme-Court-Kavanaugh/6145486a413648efa4c278453d907898/3/1">Saul Loeb/Pool Image via AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>In the case of Brett Kavanaugh, some commentators have, in effect, argued that his recent Senate testimony displayed the persisting character of an <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-sexual-assault-hearing-teenager.html">“aggressive, entitled teen,”</a> although there are those <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/09/30/graham_explains_anger_at_kavanaugh_hearing_this_was_about_delaying_the_nomination.html">who disagree</a>. </p>
<p>What I argue is that when confronted with the issue of moral responsibility for actions long since passed, we need to not only consider the nature of the past transgression but also how far and how deeply the individual has changed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Khoury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether the sins of our past stay with us forever has become a pertinent question of our time. A philosopher argues we don’t need to carry our past burdens – although there are some moral conditions.Andrew Khoury, Instructor of Philosophy, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976432018-06-05T14:19:30Z2018-06-05T14:19:30ZStephen King’s latest novel wrestles with the question of how to be in two places at one time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221795/original/file-20180605-119853-1hzicrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MatiasDelCarmine/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Can a person be in two places at the same time? This is the question at the heart of Stephen King’s latest bestseller, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/books/review/outsider-stephen-king.html">The Outsider</a>. King’s story begins with the public arrest of Terry Maitland, a popular small-town baseball coach, for a murder committed a few days earlier. Maitland is placed at the scene of the murder by multiple witnesses, fingerprints, and DNA evidence. </p>
<p>However, Maitland also has an airtight alibi – at the time of the murder he was in another city 70 miles away, his presence there supported by numerous witnesses, fingerprints, and video evidence. So unshakeable is the evidence for Maitland’s simultaneous presence both at the murder scene and at the other location, that the investigators eventually find themselves forced to entertain the question of whether one person can be in two places at the same time.</p>
<p>Curiously, bilocation – the phenomenon of one person being in two places at the same time – also featured prominently in one of the highest grossing films of 2017, <a href="http://www.philipkosloski.com/luke-skywalker-wasnt-the-first-to-bilocate-heres-a-few-real-people-who-did/">The Last Jedi</a>, the eighth instalment of the Star Wars saga. At the end of the film, we saw Luke Skywalker fighting Kylo Ren on the planet Crait while simultaneously meditating on another planet, Ahch-To.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t4DB3tVbOts?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<h2>Bilocation and multilocation</h2>
<p>As surprising as it may sound, bilocation has intrigued and exercised philosophers, scientists and theologians for centuries. There are two reasons for this. First are the numerous reports of bilocation, most of which concern saints, mystics, or other pious persons. For example, in the biography of the 16th-century <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Francis-Xavier">Saint Francis Xavier</a>, co-founder of the Jesuit order, it is claimed that he was in two places at the same time, performing missionary work in two locations many miles apart. More famously, in the 20th century it was claimed that Padre Pio, a Capuchin priest, <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/padrepio/mystic/bilocation.htm">had bilocated on many occasions</a>, both within his native Italy and beyond. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221756/original/file-20180605-119870-1p1br7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221756/original/file-20180605-119870-1p1br7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221756/original/file-20180605-119870-1p1br7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221756/original/file-20180605-119870-1p1br7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221756/original/file-20180605-119870-1p1br7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221756/original/file-20180605-119870-1p1br7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221756/original/file-20180605-119870-1p1br7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Busy man: Saint Francis Xavier, by Peter Paul Rubens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kunsthistorisches Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second reason thinkers have taken bilocation so seriously is because it is implied by a traditional interpretation of the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist – which holds that Christ’s body and his blood are really present in the bread and wine wherever the Eucharist is validly celebrated. Since the Eucharist is validly celebrated in many different places at the same time, it must be that Christ’s body is <a href="https://ronconte.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/is-jesus-locally-present-in-the-eucharist/">really present in many different places at once</a>. Because such a phenomenon would involve being in more than two places at the same time, it is often referred to as “multilocation”.</p>
<h2>Explaining and rejecting bilocation</h2>
<p>While bilocation has often been heralded as a miracle (as has multilocation), others have simply dismissed the possibility of it outright. The great Christian theologian, St Augustine, was suspicious of reports of bilocation and suggested that they were <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120118.htm">due to demonic deception</a>. In the 17th century, the philosopher John Locke argued that it was a <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/supplement.html">matter of logic</a> that a person could not be in two places at the same time. Others have suggested that cases of bilocation involve a kind of mental projection, and even Padre Pio seemed to insinuate as much when he explained his episodes of bilocation as “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nRfTKWwCTIoC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=padre+pio+an+extension+of+his+personality&source=bl&ots=Xso5B02GQY&sig=VRGsX3_cDNNYcItQxwgfFwiqAjI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwoObUr7zbAhWPa5oKHUNiDjQQ6AEIVjAJ#v=onepage&q=padre%20pio%20an%20extension%20of%20his%20personality&f=false">an extension of his personality</a>”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221797/original/file-20180605-119853-wq8ndr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221797/original/file-20180605-119853-wq8ndr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221797/original/file-20180605-119853-wq8ndr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221797/original/file-20180605-119853-wq8ndr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221797/original/file-20180605-119853-wq8ndr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221797/original/file-20180605-119853-wq8ndr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221797/original/file-20180605-119853-wq8ndr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Padre Pio: moving explanation of bilocation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roberto Dughetti – Lucia Dughetti</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most intriguing attempts to get to grips with the idea of bilocation can be found in the work of maverick Enlightenment philosopher <a href="https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/story/7513/">André-Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval</a>. Prémontval wrote an essay <a href="http://www.leibniz-translations.com/paradox.htm">in which he claimed</a> to show how it was possible for him “to be present, and really present, as much in Paris as in Rome and as much in Rome as in Paris” for the whole of an hour. </p>
<p>Prémontval’s explanation involved his body being transported backwards and forwards between the two cities at incredible speed. Because fast-moving objects leave an impression in the eye for a short time after they have moved on, to those in either city it would appear that he was there for the whole hour even though he would have been elsewhere for more than half the time. </p>
<p>Prémontval’s idea would seem to work in theory – think of the unbroken circle of light we see when a luminous object is rotated very quickly in a circle – but not in practice, as the speed of travel required is still beyond the ability of human beings. In any case, since his idea involves a person being moved very rapidly between two locations, even if it were put into practice it would not amount to true bilocation (someone actually being in two different places at the same time), but would constitute only apparent bilocation (someone appearing to be in two different places at the same time).</p>
<h2>Stranger than fiction</h2>
<p>It would be easy to dismiss these attempts to get to grips with bilocation as quaint but passé, were it not for the fact that modern physics tells us that it is a genuine feature of the natural world. The <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2012/">2012 Nobel Prize for Physics</a> was awarded to two physicists who proved that atoms and electrons can be in two places at the same time. By firing photons at an atom Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland were able to bring it to a state where it was simultaneously moving and not moving, occupying locations just 80 nanometers apart. </p>
<p>But, while bilocation may be a reality at the quantum level – and there seems to be nothing in principle to prevent it applying to much larger objects like our own bodies – <a href="http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/how-big-can-schr246dingers-kittens-get">scientists believe</a> that technical limitations will prevent us from being able to put human beings in different places at the same time. </p>
<p>Not that this should concern King – who, as you would probably expect, preferred the supernatural to the esoteric when working out the paradox of bilocation in The Outsider.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lloyd Strickland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bilocation is a popular Christian myth but also one that is known to modern physics.Lloyd Strickland, Reader in Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/938722018-03-23T13:24:14Z2018-03-23T13:24:14ZHow a blind artist is challenging our understanding of colour<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211768/original/file-20180323-54875-97sdqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Esref Armagan.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For centuries, people who were born blind have been the intellectual curios of philosophers studying consciousness. This is particularly true for those exploring the way our consciousness is effected by our bodies, especially our eyes, which Leonardo da Vinci described as the “window of the soul”.</p>
<p>One interesting fallacy is the belief that people born blind have no real idea of colour. In the 17th century, for instance, the philosopher <a href="http://web.ics.purdue.edu/%7Emjacovid/Perception.pdf">John Locke thought</a> parts of the world were peculiar to the individual senses. These parts could be seen in the lack of understanding of people who were blind or deaf. Similarly, <a href="http://documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com/9781138793934/A2/Hume/ImpressionsIdeas.pdf">David Hume believed</a> that when the senses weren’t stimulated by individual energies, such as light or sound, then no ideas could ever be formed.</p>
<p>Even in the 20th century, it was commonly believed that people born blind were unable to have a true understanding of the world around them. For instance, in 1950 the <a href="http://www.blindnessandarts.com/publications/ThesisforWebPublication/ChapterTwo.htm">psychologist Geza Revesz wrote</a>: “[No] one born blind is able to become aware of the diversity of nature and to apprehend all the rich and various appearances of objects.” Philosopher Thomas Nagel felt that blind people had only the most shallow understanding of colour in comparison to those with sight.</p>
<p>Up until the 21st century, we had little idea about how we could test our beliefs about visual concepts. But then scientists became aware of a Turkish artist named <a href="http://esrefarmagan.com/">Esref Armagan</a>. Born totally blind, Armagan has no direct visual experience. Yet he paints and draws using not only colour, but also shadow, light and perspective in his unique imaginative scenes. </p>
<p>So <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442272057/Blind-Visitor-Experiences-at-Art-Museums">how did Armagan learn about colour</a>? The answer seems to be through a creative understanding of visual elements through language and his remaining perceptions.</p>
<p>The artist has strong memories of what he was told about the visual world by his father. Armagan was often taken to this father’s engineering workshop as a child, and would ask questions about his surrounding environment.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211769/original/file-20180323-54881-1eo11m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211769/original/file-20180323-54881-1eo11m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211769/original/file-20180323-54881-1eo11m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211769/original/file-20180323-54881-1eo11m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211769/original/file-20180323-54881-1eo11m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211769/original/file-20180323-54881-1eo11m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211769/original/file-20180323-54881-1eo11m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Esref Armagan.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Crucially, he also had opportunities to use this knowledge. Being an engineer, his father owned a scribe – a sharp tool for scratching, cutting and drilling points on metal – and Armagan used it to etch images on a card board.</p>
<p>Armagan’s father would guide his blind son’s hand over the engraved lines and describe what he saw. The young artist then practised making lines to represent visual edges and shading, which he showed to family members who provided feedback and more verbal descriptions.</p>
<p>Having mastered visual ideas such as edges and shade, the teenage Armagan began drawing in colour, and continued to seek comments and feedback from those around him. He described this process to my former student Ruth Cole as one of learning by repetition: “By asking and showing – over and over again.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WFRYza49UZw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Eventually, he switched his medium of choice to paint, recalling: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I started with coloured pencils and then switched to oil paints. But they took a long time to dry so I finally discovered acrylics.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Interestingly, Armagan does not paint with watercolours, because he builds layers of paint on board and paper with his fingers, letting each layer dry before he adds another. This technique allows Armagan to sense the various colours and shades he’s creating as a substitute for seeing his new image. </p>
<h2>A new artistic perspective</h2>
<p>He has achieved a visual understanding through constant examination and discussion, supplemented through touch (he likens the colour red with the feel of something hot) and hearing (he compares the dimming of sound as it becomes distant with his use of visual perspective). He says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have created my painting in my head, including colours, before I ever start to paint. It is strictly memorisation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Armagan’s case challenges centuries of beliefs about colour. What’s more, given the accurate descriptions provided by sighted family and friends, his work shows that it is possible for people born blind to understand, describe and create visual pieces of art.</p>
<p>Perhaps researchers should now be finding examples to demonstrate how people can achieve what is thought to be unachievable, rather than focusing on theorising disability. If we can manage this, we may well <a href="http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Philosophy-as-Disability-and-Exclusion">further our understanding</a> of what the human imagination is truly capable of – instead of having a poor idea of its limitations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93872/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Hayhoe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Turkish painter Esref Armagan uses colour and perspective that he has never seen.Simon Hayhoe, Lecturer in Education, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/781552017-06-01T01:57:06Z2017-06-01T01:57:06ZWhy Jefferson’s vision of American Islam matters today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171506/original/file-20170530-23660-blxvj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Thomas Jefferson memorial in Washington, DC.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/9976931385/in/photolist-gcCo7n-gn8vcG-e327Md-e2VreV-e326Lq-4oQL9q-EZCTf-EZDLK-8Rswwu-e2VpHZ-e2VrHr-gcD5Ck-e32717-gcCoN2-e324Q7-e2Vqwz-e2Vrwe-e2VqK2-e2VoFn-26a89X-4peHXn-iFrRb1-btnZt3-5FA3aN-7HcC8u-5zHADQ-7ARNf4-7ktSZ6-exu9bU-exqGMB-exqLoF-exu3yy-exu4YQ-exqt7n-extNtW-extLij-exque4-extQVJ-6kNN9R-odKAEy-exu5Qd-extYrN-extGUQ-exqP6e-extVHs-exr4Bc-exr1uc-exqym4-exqAS6-exqCPR">Gage Skidmore</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The new Congress includes its first two Muslim women members. One of them, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, considered getting sworn in privately using a copy of the Qur'an from the library of one of America’s Founding Fathers.</p>
<p>She <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/03/politics/rashida-tlaib-breaking-barriers/index.html">told CNN</a> this shows “Islam has been part of American history for a long time.” I explored this little-known history in my book <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/170879/thomas-jeffersons-quran-by-denise-a-spellberg/9780307388391/">“Thomas Jefferson’s Qur'an: Islam and the Founders”</a>.</p>
<h2>Islam, an American religion</h2>
<p>Muslims arrived in North America as early as the 17th century, eventually composing 15 to 30 percent of the <a href="http://www.theroot.com/african-slaves-were-the-1st-to-celebrate-ramadan-in-ame-1790876253">enslaved West African population</a> of British America. (Muslims from the Middle East did not begin to immigrate here as free citizens until the late 19th century.) Even key American Founding Fathers demonstrated a marked interest in the faith and its practitioners, most notably Thomas Jefferson. </p>
<p>As a 22-year-old law student in Williamsburg, Virginia, <a href="https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/quran">Jefferson bought a Qur’an</a> – 11 years before drafting the Declaration of Independence. </p>
<p>The purchase is symbolic of a longer historical connection between American and Islamic worlds, and a more inclusive view of the nation’s early, robust view of religious pluralism.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171508/original/file-20170530-23656-yzcaus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171508/original/file-20170530-23656-yzcaus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171508/original/file-20170530-23656-yzcaus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171508/original/file-20170530-23656-yzcaus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171508/original/file-20170530-23656-yzcaus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171508/original/file-20170530-23656-yzcaus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171508/original/file-20170530-23656-yzcaus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jefferson purchased a Qur'an much before drafting the Declaration of Independence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thegreatshadow/262245901/in/photolist-pb5z4-5XfcXM-rBhT-a8N378-91aRcL-nXh13M-7gM5Fy-a31oEu-9LxaJN-fwRG3V-3rE9g-6T8Tma-5cUHnr-a8N2f2-a8N2BK-a8MZKT-CCeMe-5Vu9sp-fEyRFX-hSneYW-CLgmp6-bmY5Gu-8VMBAZ-5tCVjB-RiVRAE-bUiB4q-g23JhP-ai5nPC-BcaCi-8nmcUb-o62hYr-DVJBX-cB3Mco-DVJFZ-hNVGpk-dGEGTX-N6Gdf-9b1vm4-5AfUn-g7y8cP-55cpW-frAujP-iHUQ-2gK3Y-4k55vj-8BLQy-nY8mnX-fsS7a-pPZFpD-98phSQ">SSk Graphy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although Jefferson did not leave any notes on his immediate reaction to the Qur’an, he did criticize Islam as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Rzxlz64cRiUC&pg=PT134&lpg=PT134&dq=jefferson+islam+stifling+free+enquiry&source=bl&ots=vZ5mMQCqBt&sig=EjbI3c84tPpi-lEYxiDFi6-A6TM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGhKn7oITUAhUL6IMKHWCUDvMQ6AEILzAC#v=onepage&q=jefferson%20islam%20stifling%20free%20enquiry&f=false">“stifling free enquiry”</a> in his early political debates in Virginia, a charge he also leveled against Catholicism. He thought both religions fused religion and the state at a time he wished to separate them in his commonwealth.</p>
<p>Despite his criticism of Islam, Jefferson supported the rights of its adherents. Evidence exists that Jefferson <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/10/05/our_founding_fathers_included_islam/">had been thinking privately</a> about Muslim inclusion in his new country since 1776. A few months after penning the Declaration of Independence, he returned to Virginia to draft legislation about religion for his native state, writing in his private notes a paraphrase of the English philosopher John Locke’s 1689 <a href="http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html">“Letter on Toleration”</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[he] says neither Pagan nor Mahometan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The precedents Jefferson copied from Locke echo strongly in his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0132-0004-0082">which proclaims</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“(O)ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The statute, drafted in 1777, which <a href="http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Virginia_Statute_for_Establishing_Religious_Freedom_1786#">became law in 1786</a>, inspired the Constitution’s “no religious test” clause and the First Amendment. </p>
<h2>Jefferson’s pluralistic vision</h2>
<p>Was Jefferson thinking about Muslims when he drafted his famed Virginia legislation? </p>
<p>Indeed, we find evidence for this in the Founding Father’s 1821 autobiography, where he happily recorded that a final attempt to add the words “Jesus Christ” to the preamble of his legislation failed. And this failure led Jefferson to affirm that he had intended the application of the Statute to be “universal.” </p>
<p>By this he meant that religious liberty and political equality would not be exclusively Christian. For Jefferson <a href="http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/1399">asserted in his autobiography</a> that his original legislative intent had been “to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.” </p>
<p>By defining Muslims as future citizens in the 18th century, in conjunction with a resident Jewish minority, Jefferson expanded his “universal” legislative scope to include every one of every faith.</p>
<p>Ideas about the nation’s religiously plural character were tested also in Jefferson’s presidential foreign policy with the Islamic powers of North Africa. President Jefferson welcomed the first Muslim ambassador, who hailed from Tunis, to the White House in 1805. Because it was Ramadan, the president moved the state dinner from 3:30 p.m. to be <a href="https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tunisian-envoy">“precisely at sunset,”</a> a recognition of the Tunisian ambassador’s religious beliefs, if not quite America’s first official celebration of Ramadan. </p>
<p>Muslims once again provide a litmus test for the civil rights of all U.S. believers. Today, Muslims are fellow citizens and members of Congress, and their legal rights represent an American founding ideal still besieged by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/20/i-think-islam-hates-us-a-timeline-of-trumps-comments-about-islam-and-muslims/">fear mongering,</a> precedents at odds with the best of our ideals of universal religious freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denise A. Spellberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The first two Muslim-American women are in Congress now. They stand in a long and little-known tradition of Islam in America.Denise A. Spellberg, Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/527392016-01-21T10:48:38Z2016-01-21T10:48:38ZThe Bundys think they are preserving democracy by occupying Oregon’s Malheur refuge, but they are undermining it<p>What’s motivating the armed protesters who occupied Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last week?</p>
<p>A local sheriff explained it <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-militia-oregon-20160103-story.html">this way:</a> they came</p>
<blockquote>
<p>claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers. In reality, [they] had alternative motives to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ammon Bundy, a leader of the protesters, named their group “Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.” He <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ammon-bundy-ranchers-rights-protesters-occupy-malheur-national-wildlife-refuge-n489311">described</a> their cause this way: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The United States Justice Department has no jurisdiction or authority within the state of Oregon, county of Harney over this type of ranch management. These lands are not under U.S. treaties or commerce … and Congress does not have unlimited power.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bundy and his supporters – with guns in tow – want to challenge what they see as government overreach. They believe their method of protest is firmly American and patriotic, reminiscent of armed protests against government tyranny in the Revolutionary War. Some protesters have even donned Colonial garb to underline this point. But as someone who has studied the philosophical foundations of the Second Amendment, I would argue that their actions are detrimental to our democracy.</p>
<h2>The right to shoot tyrants</h2>
<p>The protesters have been eager to play up the air of civilian rebellion. Bundy <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/03/us/oregon-wildlife-refuge-protest/">spoke</a> of liberating the land for people to use “without fear as free men and women.”</p>
<p>Ammon’s brother Ryan <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/meet-ammon-ryan-bundy-activists-leading-oregon-standoff-n489766">called</a> the government’s restrictions on ranchers using federal land “an example of terrorism.” </p>
<p>Their firearms are what makes this an occupation and lent it that air of civilian rebellion. The Bundys and their followers are exercising the main purpose of the Second Amendment, according to <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/08/176350364/fears-of-government-tyranny-push-some-to-reject-gun-control">many</a> in the gun rights movement.</p>
<p>Soon after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, when the forces of gun control were mobilizing, Washington Times commentator Andrew Napolitano <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/10/the-right-to-shoot-tyrants-not-deer/">wrote</a>, “the historical reality of the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms is not that it protects the right to shoot deer. It protects the right to shoot tyrants, and … to shoot at them effectively.”</p>
<p>This notion lends a certain nobility to the gun rights movement. The movement sees itself as standing up for democracy. Widespread civilian gun ownership ensures the integrity of our democracy. It ensures that the people remain sovereign, as our founders intended. The “right to shoot tyrants,” as Napolitano put it, warns our leaders away from the temptation of governing too oppressively.</p>
<h2>Part of our DNA</h2>
<p>The modern gun rights movement cites English philosopher John Locke as an intellectual inspiration – a fortuitous link, since our Founding Fathers also drew on Locke in composing our founding documents. Guns are deeply inscribed in our nation’s DNA. </p>
<p>Gun rights advocates believe Locke is in their corner because he accords citizens a inviolable right of self-defense, which also extends to one’s property. </p>
<p>I have <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/locke-and-load-the-fatal-error-of-the-stand-your-ground-philosophy/?_r=0">argued</a> elsewhere, however, that the modern gun rights movement is too expansive in its conception of self-defense, even applying it to controversial Stand Your Ground laws. </p>
<p>Locke is clear that once government is convened by means of a social contract, individuals largely transfer their right of self-defense to the state. This is to avoid self-defense bleeding into vigilantism, and then war. Such a transfer is the very mark of civil society. </p>
<p>But gun rights advocates admire Locke because he sanctions the citizens’ right to dissolve government – and to use their guns to do it. Locke <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr11.htm">expresses a concern</a> that disarming subjects may enable the ruler to “make prey on them when he pleases.” The Oregon protesters would likely say they are doing Locke’s will – they are taking a stand, guns in hand, and will not be pushed around by the government any longer.</p>
<p>Locke <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm">sees</a> two primary cases where such a rebellion is justified: </p>
<ol>
<li>when a lawmaker alters the laws without consultation or consent of the people and “sets up his own Arbitrary will in place of laws,” and </li>
<li>when he aims to destroy or lay claim to their property or persons. </li>
</ol>
<h2>A tremendous risk</h2>
<p>The Oregon protesters would likely see their protest as fitting Locke’s criteria.</p>
<p>Ammon Bundy says the government is not abiding by the laws that the people have approved. His allies also believe the government, in mandating a slew of onerous regulations over federal land management, is denying them their livelihood, threatening their persons and well-being. </p>
<p>Of course, people may say that a lot of complaints against the government meet Locke’s conditions. They might – and do – call any number of government actions “tyranny.” Locke would not be surprised. He anticipated that critics would say his “hypothesis lays the ferment for frequent rebellion.”</p>
<p>But Locke was not worried. He <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm">explained</a> that people will not be quick to rebel over every little complaint, but only for “a long train of abuses.” Why? Because rebellion is no trivial matter; it carries tremendous risks, including the demise of the state and civil society, and a possible return to the anarchy of a state of nature. </p>
<p>Locke <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm">maintained</a> the right to rebellion is itself “the best fence against rebellion.” Simply knowing that the people retain this right, our elected officials will resist bad behavior. </p>
<p>More importantly, Locke said, the people must be careful in how they wield the right to rebel. It is treacherous and foolish for citizens to invoke the threat of rebellion often, or casually, or for minor and isolated complaints. Locke <a href="http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr19.htm">warned</a> those in power have the “temptation of force … and the flattery of those around them.” </p>
<p>Threats of rebellion may cause our leaders to worry about their self-preservation and provoke a violent response.</p>
<h2>Tempting a tiger</h2>
<p>These are somber words for gun rights advocates eager to justify the Second Amendment on the basis of supposed government tyranny, especially considering the “temptation of force” in the hands of the U.S. government.</p>
<p>Indeed, we have seen the government succumb to this temptation when police forces, whom the Department of Homeland Security has showered with military-grade equipment, deployed equipment to dispel protests in heavy-handed fashion, as in <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and-the-shocking-nature-of-us-police-militarization">Ferguson</a>, Missouri and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/police-clear-zuccotti-park-with-show-of-force-bright-lights-and-loudspeakers.html?_r=0">Zuccotti Park</a> in Manhattan.</p>
<p>Recurring threats of rebellion tell the government that a portion of the electorate is seriously contemplating violence – and it must be prepared to respond in turn. After all, Timothy McVeigh acted on his antigovernment sentiments. Our government cannot afford to take the threats of insurrectionists and antigovernment folk lightly. </p>
<p>The gun rights advocates may make their predictions come true. They fret about tyrannical government, but by waving their guns threateningly, by frequently citing the right to rebel, they invite the government to respond with force. The government has been restrained thus far in dealing with Malheur, but as Locke argues, insurrection encourages the government to be oppressive and act outside the law. </p>
<p>Martin Luther King Jr. understood democracy far better when, from the Birmingham jail, he <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">wrote</a>, “one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly,” for in so doing, he expresses “the highest regard for law.” </p>
<p>The genius of unarmed protest is that it compels our leaders to behave and respond lawfully. King proved how effective nonviolent protest can be. The Oregon protesters would do well to ponder his example.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Firmin DeBrabander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The notion of civil rebellion – like the one at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge – is at the heart of the Second Amendment. But so is the idea that such rebellions should not be undertaken lightly.Firmin DeBrabander, Professor of Philosophy, Maryland Institute College of ArtLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.