Recently added articles from The Southern Journal of Philosophy:

Categories of Life: The Status of the Camp in Derrida and Agamben

Jul 01, 2008; Cisney, Vernon ... Abstract This essay is an exploration of the relationship between Agamben's 1995 text, Homo Sacer, and Derrida's 1992 "Force of Law" essay. Agamben attempts to show that the camp, as the topological space of the state of exception, has become the biopolitical paradigm for modernity. He ...

Moral Status As a Matter of Degree?

Jul 01, 2008; DeGrazia, David ... Abstract Some people contend that fetuses have moral status but less than that of paradigm persons. Many people hold views implying that sentient animals have moral status but less than that of persons. These positions suggest that moral status admits of degrees. Does it? To address this ...

The Varieties of Instrumental Rationality

Jul 01, 2008; Ellis, Stephen ... Abstract It is a mistake to think that instrumental rationality fixes a single standard for judging or describing actions. While there is a core conception of instrumental rationality, we appeal to different elaborations of that conception for different purposes. An action can be ...

Classical Invariantism and the Puzzle of Fallibilism

Jul 01, 2008; Kelp, Christoph ... Abstract This paper revisits a puzzle that arises for theories of knowledge according to which one can know on the basis of merely inductive grounds. No matter how strong such theories require inductive grounds to be if a belief based on them is to qualify as knowledge, there are certain ...

Situating Time in the Leibnizian Hierarchy of Beings

Jul 01, 2008; Lloyd, Rebecca J ... Abstract Leibniz's widely influential account of time provides a significant puzzle for those seeking to locate this account within his hierarchical ontology. Leibniz follows his scholastic predecessors in supposing that there are different grades of being, with substances being the most ...

Kant's Quasi-Transcendental Argument for a Necessary and Universal Evil Propensity in Human Nature

Jul 01, 2008; Palmquist, Stephen R ... Abstract In Part One of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant repeatedly refers to a "proof" that human nature has a necessary and universal "evil propensity," but he provides only obscure hints at its location. Interpreters have failed to identify such an argument in Part One ....

That "Ought" Does Not Imply "Right": Why It Matters for Virtue Ethics

Jul 01, 2008; Russell, Daniel C ... Abstract Virtue ethicists sometimes say that a right action is what a virtuous person would do, characteristically, in the circumstances. But some have objected recently that right action cannot be defined as what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances because there are ...