Summary In a world that proclaims human rights as universal, what does it mean that entire peoples are rendered legally nonexistent—human beings for whom, as Hannah Arendt put it, “no law exists”? This essay turns to Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s philosophy of recognition to argue that the Rohingya are not only victims of a humanitarian disaster,…
The argument over how society should respond to addiction is usually framed in medical or political terms, but beneath it lies a moral dispute: what kind of thing is addiction, and what does our answer imply about responsibility, dignity, and hope? Two models dominate public imagination. The abstinence model insists that recovery must mean total…
Climate change is often framed as a technical problem: too much carbon, too little regulation, insufficient political will. But beneath these explanations lies a deeper disturbance—one that the German philosopher Günther Anders diagnosed decades ago, long before climate change became a household term. Anders argued that modern humanity has become obsolete relative to the technologies…
Recent efforts to withdraw federal funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to transgender adolescents represent more than a controversial policy choice. They constitute an assault on the very conditions under which transgender people can exist as recognized members of the moral and political community. While such a move is indefensible from familiar ethical standpoints—utilitarian…
If there is one thing modern societies have learned from pandemic years and chronic inequality, it is that health is not a private matter. The spread of illness—biological, social, and moral—exposes how deeply our lives are intertwined. Yet we still talk about healthcare as if it were an optional service, a product to be purchased,…
In the debates we hear about the significance of universal healthcare, there is something frequently left out of the discussion. A universal healthcare system is about providing a just and accessible healthcare system, the resources of which can and should be made universally available. It is also about ending a system which systematically reproduces health…
The levels of wealth inequality we are currently witnessing in this country are unprecedented and alarming. The very richest among us have succeeded in grabbing ever more of the proverbial pie, and the trend is only worsening. Wealth inequality is proving disastrous for America. On both collective and individual levels, we are suffering because of…
To date, nearly two hundred million Americans – just over 60 percent of the population – have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Recent reports indicate that unvaccinated adults are more than three times as likely to lean Republican. In other words, for every unvaccinated Democrat there are roughly three unvaccinated Republicans. An important question then…
Is it not extraordinary that in a country that claims to be as enlightened and advanced as ours, the combined wealth of three individuals – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and investor Warren Buffett – exceeds the total wealth of the bottom half of Americans? One has to return to the days…
Black History Month challenges all of us to learn, reflect and understand many things about the Black American experience, among them the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. This outrage, perpetrated by the US Public Health Service, was not conducted for a year or even a decade – it went on for forty years. Originally intended to be…
It does not seem possible that here in the United States, a country that has long prided itself on its humanity, a man could be serving a life sentence for stealing hedge clippers. Yet, shocking as it is, Fair Wayne Bryant’s story is the story of thousands of Americans whose lives have been decimated by…
The US Supreme Court decided on June 15 that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination. Discrimination ‘because of sex’ is unlawful. But what is it that makes discrimination morally wrong? It is useful to examine this from a Kantian standpoint because Immanuel Kant lays the foundation for…
To really address Trumpism and the denial of man-made climate change, we have to assume moral responsibility, not only for our actions but for our beliefs themselves. Philosophy has a crucial role to play today in addressing the moral challenge we face in terms of the weakening of our normative commitments. The antidote to Trumpism…
