The Panacea Problem The Panacea Problem: Indifference, Servility, and Kantian Beneficence Benjamin Eneman Georgetown University April 2021 Kant’s account of the duty of beneficence as a wide, imperfect duty initially seems at odds with our intuitive belief that helping others is, at least in some cases, morally obligatory. Various Kantian philosophical accounts have constructed different ways to address this problem. In this paper, I adopt and expand on Karen Stohr’s account of the duty of beneficence as a two-part duty composed by a wide duty to help others and a narrow duty to avoid indifference. After observing that merely adopting this view seems to result in over-stringency, I then argue that perfect and imperfect duties to others and the self act as counterarguments to claims of indifference. We have obligations to help others. That fact seems almost universally intuitive; it appears quite clear that, at least in some instances, we are somehow morally deficient if we fail to help other people. What is often less clear is the source of such strong obligations, and what sorts of concerns have the capacity to limit them. In this paper, I aim to construct a system of Kantian obligations that define and adequately bound our duty to help others, then consider the implications that system of obligations has on everyday life. I will argue that we should adopt Karen Stohr’s model of beneficence as a two-part duty where the duty to avoid indifference towards others in their role as end-setters is bounded and framed within duties to oneself, particularly duties to avoid servility and to respect one’s own status as a setter of ends. I will briefly summarize Kant’s view before proceeding. Kant divides duties into perfect and imperfect, as well as wide and narrow, categories. Taking Kant’s universal law formulation, if the maxim of a particular action’s very conception cannot be universalized without inherent contradiction, it violates a perfect duty; if the maxim results not in contradiction in conception but rather in contradiction of the will, it violates an imperfect duty. For example, making a false promise to a friend to repay a loan violates a perfect duty, because the concept of lying is only coherent when truth is assumed, and universalizing the maxim that “one ought to lie to a friend in order to get money” would result in a world where that assumption would deteriorate, making the concept of lying incoherent. Alternatively, under Kant’s humanity formulation, perfect duties are violated when someone treats another person as a mere means (fails to show respect for humanity as a negative end), while imperfect duties involve obligations to value and show respect for humanity as setters of ends. Perfect duties are always narrow—they are stringent, and we have an obligation to follow them at all times. Imperfect duties, however, can be broader or narrower, depending on the degree and kinds of latitude afforded to them. Generally speaking, broader duties allow for more variation than narrower duties in how they are achieved and the degree to which they are pursued at any given time. Wide duties leave “playroom (latitudo) for free choice in following the law” and “cannot specify precisely in what way one is to act and how much one is to do by the action,” Kant says, but cautions that they don’t grant carte blanche to “make exceptions to the maxim of actions but only as permission to limit one’s maxim of duty by another.” Consequently, “Fulfillment of [imperfect duties] is merit = +a, but failure to fulfill them is not in itself culpability = -a, but rather mere deficiency in moral worth = 0, unless the subject should make it his principle not to comply with such duties.” In other words, people are standardly praiseworthy for taking actions that fulfill imperfect duties, but are not standardly blameworthy for failing to do so on any particular occasion. At first glance, then, it might seem as if Kantian moral theory does not adequately address the scope of duties of beneficence—obligations to help others. The duty of beneficence is imperfect, since violating it stems from a contradiction in the will. We can conceive of a world in which nobody helps anyone else or adopts others’ ends as their own, but such a world would ultimately result in the frustration of our own ends, and therefore cannot be rationally willed, since one cannot rationally will the frustration or denial of one’s own ends (as doing so would mean willing against what one wills). Because the duty of beneficence is a wide, imperfect duty—one that affords real latitude in the manner and extent to which it is met—it seems difficult to square with intuitive judgements about situations in which one is truly obligated to help another person. For example, in cases of easy rescue (say, a child drowning in a bathtub a foot away from someone able to help) it seems like anyone who does not perform the rescue is displaying immoral behavior rather than simply not displaying moral behavior. It seems like not only do they have a particularly strong sort of obligation to others to help, but also that they are standardly blameworthy for failing to do so even if they do not make it a principle to fail to help in those sorts of instances. If, by some bizarre set of circumstances, I encounter five different children drowning in shallow water in one day, I could not justify not saving the fifth by pointing to the other four I had saved that day to show that it was clearly not my principle to avoid helping drowning children (or people in general). Such an attempted justification would seem absurd for instances similar to this. This is a real problem for proponents of Kantian ethics—it seems as if Kantian moral philosophy is not demanding enough in cases like these. Cases of easy rescue pose a strong (though, I contend, not insurmountable) challenge to latitudinarian accounts of the duty of beneficence (accounts that argue that the duty of beneficence inherently grants latitude in terms of the means by and extent to which it is pursued). Broadly, there seem to be three different approaches one could take when confronted with this problem, and while I only aim to pursue one, it seems worthwhile to at least sketch out the others and briefly address the reasons they fall short. First, one could accept the problem itself as reason enough to reject Kantianism in general. Because I contend that the problem, while significant, is not insurmountable, this approach seems to me to fall short. Second, one could bite the bullet and simply say our intuition is wrong in those cases of easy rescue, but it seems quite implausible that our intuitions surrounding these cases are wrong, so a solution that is able to account for them without abandoning the ethical framework we want to preserve would be better. Third, one could abandon, alter, or expand upon the latitudinarian account of beneficence specifically. This is the approach I will utilize. There have been a few different proposed Kantian solutions surrounding the latitudinarian account of beneficence: by finding a more rigorist interpretation of duties of beneficence (while still being constrained by perfect duties) as David Cummiskey does, by appealing to “true needs'' as opposed to “wants” as Barbara Herman does, and by arguing that the wide duty of beneficence is framed in part by a narrow duty to avoid indifference to others as Karen Stohr does. I will argue for Stohr’s approach, then modulate it in the face of a serious concern. For Stohr, what we ordinarily construe as a single duty of beneficence is really comprised of two parts: “a wide duty to perform helping actions on occasion and a narrow duty to avoid an attitude of indifference towards others as end-setters.” On many occasions, we can be non-indifferent without actively helping another person. To illustrate, Stohr gives the example of wishing someone luck before they go out in the rain to get a ticket to a concert they really want to see or congratulating them when they return with a ticket. However, this is not always the case—in the cases of easy rescue I have been discussing, the only way to avoid indifference is to rescue the person, since anything short of helping them constitutes a wanton display of indifference. The duty to avoid indifference as constructed by Stohr is imperfect (since it stems from a requirement to adopt a maxim rather than perform or abstain from a particular action, and violations result in a contradiction of the will rather than a contradiction in conception inherent to universalizations of indifference), but the sort of latitude it allows is only in the manner in which it is achieved and not the extent to which it is achieved, because displaying indifference towards a person involves not adopting “the attitude that her ends carry moral significance insofar as they are her ends,” and displaying indifference therefore shows a lack of acknowledgement for her “status as a setter of ends.” Therefore, because the duty of non-indifference is narrow in this particular sort of way, we owe non-indifference to others at all times, so actions that show indifference are never permissible—unless avoiding indifference would necessarily result in the violation of a perfect duty—and cases of easy rescue, for example, always necessitate action, since helping is the only way to avoid violating the stringent imperfect duty of non-indifference as constructed by Stohr. I will illustrate this distinction with an example from the superhero web serial Worm, in which a character named Panacea has the power to quickly heal any disease or injury. This power has also given her a sense of obligation that has dominated her life—she gained the power when she was a young teenager, and ever since then, she has felt that every moment she takes to herself is horrendously selfish since she could be, for example, visiting a hospital to cure every cancer patient there instead. Suppose Panacea walks past a large hospital on her way to see a movie with her sister Victoria. Of course, she knows there are almost certainly dozens if not hundreds of people who stand a very real chance of dying if she doesn’t help them immediately. Since all it costs her to save dozens of lives is that she postpone or cancel movie night with her sister, it might seem as if choosing to see the movie over saving lives is necessarily a display of indifference, no matter how many people she saved earlier that day—much as walking past a drowning child one could easily save at effectively zero cost to oneself results in a display of indifference no matter how many drowning children one has helped so far that day. Panacea also cannot just wish the patients well or pursue some other non-helping action to satisfy the constraint of non-indifference, since any well-wishes or non-helping action would seem horrendously insincere—she could have actually cured their illnesses and injuries but chose not to due to a more or less insignificant cost to herself. So, under a plain reading of Stohr’s model, Panacea would seem to be expressing indifference whenever she decided to go see a movie with her sister instead of saving hundreds of lives, and since non-indifference is owed to others at all times, she can never permissibly see a movie with her sister, since she will never reach a point where nobody is in need of her help. But it seems difficult to square that result with our own intuition. While there are obviously no Panaceas in the real world, some trained medical professionals might feel the same sort of burden. Take one of the permutations of Stohr’s example about a doctor “performing life-saving surgery on impoverished people in developing countries.” Suppose that the doctor plans on taking a flight home in an hour (not to attend to any particularly urgent crisis at home, simply because they want to go back), but someone appears in their waiting room in urgent need of such a surgery, which will take two hours. It seems to be a display of indifference to ever prioritize not delaying one’s flight over another person’s life. However, it seems intuitive that a moral theory ought not require them to stay indefinitely if they are helping in such a region. Resultantly, it seems like something is missing from the account that simply argues that we have a narrow imperfect duty to avoid indifference—it seems to be, in some cases, too stringent. It now seems that a Kantian approach has to be able to thread the needle between never requiring a particular act of aid and being over-demanding (e.g., requiring the surgeon to stay indefinitely). I contend that, in some cases, the only way to effectively do this from a Kantian lens is to appeal to certain duties to oneself—a perfect duty to refrain from servility, and imperfect duties that stem from the duty to respect one’s own autonomy—and use them to bound or frame duties to help others. First, let’s consider possible duties to others that might allow the surgeon to leave, both intuitively and within a Kantian framework. It is simply the case that any sort of perfect duty one has to another “trumps” the narrow, imperfect duty of non-indifference if the two are ever reasonably in conflict—that’s a fundamental quality of perfect duties. But certain sorts of urgent, narrow, imperfect duties can act to allow the surgeon to leave as well. Suppose the surgeon has a son at home who was just critically injured in a car crash, and needs to leave as soon as they can to be there for him. At this point, the sort of familial obligations the surgeon has can serve as a justification for leaving even if a patient has just come to the waiting room in need of assistance, because we can imagine the surgeon justifying their decision to the patient with something along the lines of “of course, I don’t want to leave you in the lurch, and it hurts me deeply that I can’t help you, but I have to go see my son.” The patient almost certainly won’t like this, but they cannot reasonably see the surgeon as displaying indifference through that action. So it is possible that some obligations to others can act as a sort of counter to any claim another might make that they are displaying indifference—exactly what sorts of obligations can function that way depends largely on the circumstances. Since certain important obligations the surgeon has to others can allow them to leave, it seems as if they aren’t trapped after all. But something important is missing in this solution. It is always possible to include in the construction of our scenario that there is no other obligation to others that is sufficient to act as a counter to claims of indifference. For example, if the obligation for a family member is sufficient to counter claims of indifference, we can simply stipulate that the surgeon has no family, and we can continue doing this for any given condition. Ideally, our solution would include a broad account of the sorts of duties that are sufficient to counter claims of indifference. In sum, appealing to certain obligations to others to counter the overly-stringent demand of non-indifference seems to fall short of an adequate solution. We are in need of a different kind of solution. In addition to obligations we owe to others, Kant also argues that we have duties to ourselves that are no less deliberatively impactful than our duties to others. I will argue that the surgeon can justify flying home by appealing to such duties to the self rather than duties to another person, duties which are (as before) divided into perfect and imperfect duties. One such duty to oneself is the perfect duty to avoid servility. Thomas Hill, a modern Kantian moral philosopher, defines servility as a “kind of deferential attitude towards others resulting from ignorance or misunderstanding of one’s moral rights” or, when aware and educated on those rights, “a willingness to disavow one’s moral status, publicly and systematically, in the absence of any strong reason to do so.” On face value, it seems strange that avoiding servility would be a perfect duty. It has been established that adopting the ends of others as your own is an imperfect duty, after all. But upon reflection, avoiding servility is a perfect duty since abnegation of one’s own ends to satisfy the ends of others creates a contradiction if universalized: completely subsuming one’s own ends to the ends of others results in an individual whose only actual ends are the ends of others, and if universalized, nobody has any ends for anyone else to achieve. Here is why. If I adopt a servile attitude, I am taking up an attitude that I matter less than others from a moral standpoint, and that therefore my ends have no real deliberative weight or moral value compared to the ends of (at least some) others. Consequently, I cannot really be said to put any significant moral stock in my own ends, instead subsuming them to the ends of others, and therefore do not really hold my own ends, since holding an end means believing it carries some real normative weight. If this attitude of servility is thus universalized, nobody really values or holds their own ends in any meaningful way, so servility, which relies on others holding ends, is an incoherent concept. Servility results in a contradiction in conception rather than a contradiction in the will. Alternatively, this can be framed in terms of the humanity formulation, which contends that since to be servile is to treat yourself as a means to the ends of others, someone who is servile fails to show respect for their own humanity as a negative end and therefore violates a perfect duty. In our example, a doctor choosing to stay indefinitely would necessarily be abandoning large swathes, if not the entirety, of the ends that they genuinely hold—they would be treating the ends of their patients, at least those ends that represent true needs, as lexicographically (i.e., weighted categorically) more important than other ends the doctor might have—to watch terrible science fiction movies, or enjoy the Washington, D.C. cherry blossoms, or any other number of possible personal ends—since staying indefinitely seems to mean taking up the attitude that those ends don’t deliberatively matter at all and ought to be completely abnegated in the presence of the ends of the patients. It’s clear that this sort of systematic disavowal of their own ends constitutes the sort of deferential attitude that indicates servility and results in the doctor not showing respect for their own humanity as a negative end and viewing themselves as a mere means to the ends of others. As stated earlier, perfect duties trump imperfect ones, so if the doctor remaining (or continuing to perform any beneficent act) constitutes servility which would entail violating a perfect duty, then the doctor ought not remain, and it seems that the doctor remaining does constitute servility. One possible objection is that the doctor remaining is not necessarily servile, since the doctor could be seeing to the ends of others as an extension of their genuine autonomous decision to do so. This objection does not seem to work. The doctor pictured in the objection would be holding attitudes with certain limited parallels to Hill’s “Deferential Wife,” a hypothetical person holding particular attitudes towards herself. The Deferential Wife believes that, while women are fundamentally mentally and physically equal to men, “the proper role for a woman is to serve her family” and who resultantly chooses to act deferentially to her husband in every instance. As Hill argues, this is sufficient to bar the concept of legitimate consent, because “if she believes that she has a duty to defer to her husband, then, whatever she may say, she cannot fully understand that she has a right not to defer to him.” If someone thinks exercising a right would be an offense, they cannot “really understand what it is to have and freely give up” that right. Just like the Deferential Wife, it seems here that the doctor does not believe in any sort of inferiority for themselves but rather simply believes that, for doctors in their position, it is their proper role to stay and see to the needs of those in need. Moreover, the potentially horrific consequences of leaving (viz., the death of patients who could be saved) seem very likely to create an incredible amount of social pressure and fear of later guilt that have the potential to crowd out the capacity for a genuinely autonomous decision to stay. This does get complicated by the fact that staying is in accordance with the wide duty of helping on occasion and the narrow duty to avoid indifference to others. Taking into account all these moral psychological factors, the doctor’s understanding of what it means for them to have a right to leave is likely occluded at best. The doctor doesn’t really know what it means for them to have a right to leave, and so does not value themselves as a moral agent with the right to choose to leave, falling into the same sort of servility as Hill’s Deferential Wife, or the defendant who believes they have an obligation to not exercise their right to a trial by jury of their peers with a competent defense attorney since they believe doing so would be rude. One who does not understand their rights does not understand their moral worth, and one who does not comprehend one’s moral worth and as a result subsumes one’s ends under the ends of others is servile. Here, the doctor does not understand their rights and, by extension, their moral worth, since feelings of obligation and social/psychological pressure crowd out their capacity to understand that they have a choice. As a result, the doctor has an obligation to themselves to leave, since remaining violates a perfect duty to avoid servility. Admittedly, one might argue that if the doctor becomes legitimately aware of their own moral rights, they are not being servile even if they continue to display the same sorts of “marks of deference” by staying indefinitely. Here, the doctor is neither ignorant of their rights nor acting as if they were insignificant; rather, they are pursuing a task with a cost to themselves after weighing and considering their options. Here, staying would no longer necessitate violating a perfect duty to themselves, and leaving would therefore not be strictly obligatory. Still, even in this case, I would argue that the doctor has certain imperfect duties to themselves that act (much as imperfect duties to others do) as a counterargument against claims of indifference. Kant’s standard imperfect duties to the self as laid out in The Metaphysics of Morals are to cultivate one’s own talents (“Natural Perfection” for a “pragmatic purpose”) and to cultivate one’s own moral capacity (“for a moral purpose only”). The duty to develop one’s own talents is a wide imperfect duty in both quality (the means and methods one uses to pursue a duty) and degree (the extent to which one pursues that duty), since it stems from a duty to take up a general maxim, and violation of the duty results only in a contradiction of the will and not a contradiction in conception. The duty to cultivate one’s own moral capacity is “narrow and perfect in terms of quality” but “wide and imperfect in terms of degree,” since it is a perfect duty to strive for moral perfection, but our own human limitations prevent us from actually achieving it. Both of these duties, I contend, stem from, and are crucial to achieving, a duty to promote and cultivate one’s own autonomy. Here I mean autonomy in the Kantian sense as truly free capacity to choose to act in accordance with moral law and not just nominally free choice. Both the applicability of talents and moral capacity depend crucially on our capacity for autonomy, since autonomy is necessary for moral agency. In addition, fulfilling self-duties framed by the Humanity Formulation (i.e., respecting one’s own status as a setter of ends) necessarily entails cultivating the capacity to set those ends, which is an act of cultivating autonomy. We all have the capacity for autonomy as human beings, but such capacities are often limited by factors both outside and within our control. For example, I have panic disorder, and frequently have panic attacks that both prevent me from making autonomous decisions while having them, and result in other conditions—physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion, anxieties, etc.—that all act to limit my autonomy. In order to cultivate my talents, my moral capacity, and autonomy, I have a wide duty to take actions that mitigate these effects—a class of things like seeing a psychiatrist, taking medication, finding and pursuing outlets for dealing with stress or emotional catharsis, and so on. In sum, I have a wide duty to myself to pursue self-care. Likewise, even neurotypical folks have a bevy of social pressures, stressful conditions, feelings of obligation to others, and levels of mental, physical, and emotional harms that are autonomy-limiting, and resultantly also have duties of self-care. Another important duty that stems from that cluster of duties to oneself to cultivate, promote, and respect one’s own autonomy is a duty to the self to live one’s life in a genuine, authentic manner—that is, to live life in accordance with one’s own permissible ends and the moral law, free as much as is psychologically possible from pressures that limit one from doing so. This has a justification similar to our duty to promote our own autonomy and cultivate our talents, which parallels obligations to one’s own ends that are also duties as laid out in Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue. In staying indefinitely despite wanting to leave, the doctor cannot fulfill duties of self-care and duties to pursue and promote their own autonomy. To be clear, so long as the doctor avoids servility (i.e., genuinely understands that they have a right to leave and stays despite so understanding), staying is probably permissible since those unfulfilled duties are imperfect duties that do not have the trumping feature of the perfect duty to avoid servility discussed earlier. But nonetheless, these sorts of imperfect duties can serve as a counterargument against claims of indifference. We can imagine the doctor speaking to a hypothetical patient and saying something like: “Look, it legitimately pains me to go before I can fully help you, but I have to live my own, genuinely autonomous life pursuing my own ends, so I have to pursue the sorts of things that allow me to live in such a way, and that means I have to leave.” This certainly seems weaker than the argument made before (about leaving to be with a critically-injured son) since the duties used as a counterargument are broader and seem less urgent, at least for any given occasion, since most single actions do not in and of themselves prevent someone from living their own life. But, I would contend, they are sufficient grounds for rendering the act of leaving permissible, since they act as counterarguments against claims of indifference, meaning that the doctor can leave without violating that duty. And, of course, if the doctor genuinely regards their commitment to helping their patients as what their life is about, and reaches that conclusion autonomously with full understanding that they are free to choose other permissible ends and is therefore not displaying servility in doing so, staying is also permissible. Neither of these two cases (a perfect duty to leave that stems from the perfect duty to avoid servility and a set of imperfect duties to respect, cultivate, and promote one’s own autonomy) erase one’s obligations to avoid indifference to others. Rather, the first case acts as a trump when the two are in conflict, and both act as arguments against claims that the doctor is violating a duty of non-indifference in leaving—the first case because it is a stringent duty that would leave no room for permissibly staying, the second because a doctor who has to leave to respect, cultivate, and promote their own autonomy could plausibly argue that they really do value the people they’re leaving behind but cannot stay indefinitely without indefinitely violating an important if imperfect duty to themselves. In this manner, imperfect duties to the self act in a similar way to imperfect duties to others (e.g., an imperfect duty to be there for one’s children if they become critically injured) in terms of their function as a counterargument to claims of indifference. These sorts of arguments, and the case for the permissibility of leaving, are strengthened the more the doctor does to show non-indifference. The doctor has an obligation to set a departure date ahead of time and stick to it as best as possible—otherwise, the time they do leave risks being or seeming arbitrary. If possible, the doctor ought to attempt to find a replacement so that nobody dies or suffers greatly because of their departure; failing that, they ought to help with passing on basic, vital skills to those in the country while there. Further, they continue to have obligations once they get home to continue to show that they do care—to financially and socially support institutions that bring physicians to impoverished nations to do medical work, to work to erase the conditions that cause poverty in general, and so on. This list is not exhaustive, obviously, but rather a broad sketch of the sorts of things they probably ought to do to further solidify the permissibility of leaving, where the permissibility of leaving is dependent on avoiding showing indifference to others. Most of us are not highly-trained doctors in far-flung nations helping solve life-or-death crises. But, given how interconnected the world is, it can seem like others are constantly in need of the sort of help we can provide—whether financially, through social and political advocacy, or some other means. And, I would argue, we do have a duty to help them, stemming from concerns about indifference as well as duties to help others. It is still incumbent on us to avoid feeling indifferent (numb, jaded, or otherwise) towards people. But we cannot devalue ourselves entirely. Beyond utilitarian sorts of concerns for psychological well-being, we have to see ourselves as autonomous members of a moral community with incalculable value. Panacea cannot be indifferent to the suffering of the sick, but she is not morally bankrupt for spending time with her family or alone enjoying nature. We have obligations to others, obligations to avoid indifference that we all too often shirk—we turn away refugees, paint homeless people as junkies to justify not helping them, become jaded and callous in the face of anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and other forms of bigoted violence, and fall victim to countless other pitfalls of indifference. But we must also take care not to erase ourselves from the picture, abdicating our place in the great project of humanity. To close with a story from the Jewish tradition, Rabbi Simcha Bunim took to the habit of carrying two slips of paper, one in each pocket. One read “V’anochi afar v’efer”—I am but dust and ashes. The other read “Bishvili nivra ha-olam”—the world was created for my sake. He used to look at one or the other when he needed to throughout the day. We must remember that we are but dust and ashes, and live a life dedicated to important causes and projects, not turning away from the suffering of others, but we also need to remember our place as moral agents and as ends in ourselves. And as such, we have to take care of and be gentle with not only others but also ourselves. REFERENCES Buber, Martin. Tales of the Hasidim, Vol. 2: The Later Masters. Translated by Olga Marx. Schocken Books. Hill, Thomas E. Jr. “Servility and Self Respect.” The Monist, Oxford University Press, Vol. 57, No. 1, January 1973, pp. 87-104. Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge University Press. McCrae, John C. Worm. Wordpress, 2011-2013. Stohr, Karen. “Kantian Beneficence and the Problem of Obligatory Aid.” Journal of Moral Philosophy vol. 8 (2011), pp. 45-67. Williams, Bernard. “A Critique of Utilitarianism.” Ethics, 6th ed., edited by Steven M Cahn and Peter Markie, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 544-560. Thanks also to Dr. Karen Stohr for advising and helping guide me through this paper, my peers for questions and comments which helped me clarify and strengthen my case, and family members for listening to me work through the early stages of thinking about this topic.

Transcendental Self Reconceptualizing the Idea of the Self within Western Philosophy: The Existence-Reason Binary and the Nonrational Transcendental Self Jennifer Kim Pomona College Author Ebba Brunnstrom Grace Engelman Alan Garcia-Ramos Fengyi Wan Editors Spring 2018 In order to overcome the existence-reason binary present in philosophy, I propose the notion of nonrational transcendental self. In philosophy, the ontological question asks, “How might a self understand its own being?” Views on the self were initially dominated by the rationalists, who argue that reason, rather than sense experience, reveals the true nature of things. In response, a subsequent movement called existentialism critiques rationalism for mistaking the human being as a stagnant thinker. Existentialists argue that human beings are not merely rational beings, but also dynamic subjects who experience and change. From the existentialist viewpoint, reason by itself is wholly incapable of capturing the subject’s lived experience. In my observation, the rationalist-existentialist debate gave rise to a conceptual binary, where existence and reason are mutually exclusive. It is my view that this binary hinders the revolutionary potential of existentialist philosophy. The binary is problematic because it disallows an alternative understanding of the self outside of reason and existence. There are complexities in our nature that occur outside the binary, such as our nonrational selves. If we continue to approach ontology without breaking the binary, we can never accurately or sufficiently answer the basic question of how to understand our own being. My answer to resolving the binary is to propose a rethinking of the self as nonrational and transcendental. First, I will induct nonrationality as an alternative to the binary that neither rejects nor is wholly subsumed under reason or its counterpart, existence. I begin by exploring examples of the transcendental self as exemplified in the Kantian subjects of moral and aesthetic judgments. I then introduce the notion of a nonrational transcendental self, which is the self that experiences and knows, but does not judge. Finally, I show that the nonrational transcendental self truly exists within us and reveals itself most clearly when we experience life alongside the question of suicide and when we experience a moment of beauty. The need to convey the nonrational transcendental self transpires from the restrictions of the binary. Therefore, I shall first identify the emergence of the reason-existence binary by tracing the use of reason and existence in historical ontological debates. The rationalist view of the self begins with Descartes, who articulates that rational self-reflection reveals the true nature of the human being as the thinking self, the eternal mind (Descartes – Translation: Haldane, 1991). Hegel, likewise, perceives reason as the proper lenses through which to discover the human being’s true nature and place in the world. In Hegelian philosophy, history is the linear unfolding of reason and all of our individual subjectivities are merely subsumed under this hyper-rational unfolding (Hegel – Translation: Hartman, 1953). Such extreme rationalism is challenged by the Kantian philosophy of transcendental idealism, which curtails the overreach of pure reason by designating it to a regulatory rule (Kant – Translation: Guyer and Wood, 1998). According to transcendental idealism, we are limited to knowing and perceiving phenomena (i.e. things as they appear in time and space). We do not have access to noumena (“things-as-they-are-in-themselves”) (Kant – Translation: Guyer and Wood, 1998). Reason, as our structural framework, can help us decide upon the truth of phenomena, but it cannot conclude anything substantial about noumena. As we are incapable of perceiving our noumenal selves, it is an illegitimate use of reason to attempt to rationally discover our true selves (Kant – Translation: Guyer and Wood, 1998). Consequently, Kant reintroduces the question of the self-understanding its own being, allowing existentialists to arrive on the scene and offer a viewpoint opposing the rationalists. Existentialism emerges with Kierkegaard’s publication of Either/Or in 1843. Kierkegaard points out that our singular viewpoint to life is our existing and subjective self. Objective truth only has meaning in relation to a knower, who is subjective and dynamic. Thus, Kierkegaard criticizes Descartes for mistakenly substituting the human being as an “infinitely indifferent” knower and explicitly rejects Cartesian rationalism as “a mirage [where] everything is and nothing becomes” (Kierkegaard – Translation: Hong and Hong, 1978). For Kierkegaard, reason, either as some ultimate methodology towards truth or as a priori structures of cognition and understanding, fails to account for our fundamental nature as those who experience. After Kierkegaard, existentialist thinker Heidegger published Being and Time in 1927. Being and Time reorients the ontological approach by introducing the concept dasein, which translates to being-in-the-world (Heidegger – Translation: Macquarrie and Robinson, 1962). In contrast to the rationalists who believe that true human nature can only be understood when abstracted away from experience, Heidegger argues that human beings are dasein and can know themselves only as they exist in the world. All philosophical inquiry on human nature must acknowledge our essential condition as dasein if it is to be accurate and effective. By contrast, ontology, which claims to understand human nature independent of its being-in-the-world, is illegitimate. Then, in 1943, another existentialist named Sartre published Being and Nothingness. Echoing Kantian thought, Sartre argues that we cannot ask what the nature of the human being in itself is. When we try to answer ontologically about our noumenal selves, we immediately establish a duality (between “I” as the subject and “I” as the referred-to object) that is essentially at odds with the oneness of self that we associate with the ‘true self’ (Sartre – Translation: Barnes, 1956). Instead of asking what being is, Sartre recommends that we ask how being is. In other words, what are our modes of being? Sartre states that the human being is a factical self, which refers to our physical being grounded in concrete circumstances (Sartre – Translation: Barnes, 1956). The human being is also a transcendent self, which means that we are not only our factical self, but also all of our negations and possibilities. For example, the seemingly insignificant waiter at a restaurant is not merely a waiter. That is, as a human being, the waiter’s existence does not depend on his or her being waiter. The waiter may be countless other things apart from a waiter and is still yet to be many things in the future. Sartre’s point is that our existence as human beings cannot be fully captured by the roles our factical selves play. For Sartre, the human being is essentially fluid and full of possibility (Sartre – Translation: Barnes, 1956). Therefore, Sartre considers that reason as logical form, which accepts negation and exclusion as definitive, cannot sufficiently account for the human being. My purpose in explicating the ontological debate between rationalists and existentialists is to show that within the philosophical tradition, there is a shift from understanding the human being as a stagnant thinker to an experiencing subject. I argue that the debate which motivated this shift in thinking also unintentionally produced a conceptual binary between reason and existence. Existentialism presents itself as a purposeful critique of rationalism. The language of the existentialists is intentionally contrasted to the language of the rationalists. The existentialists describe the true nature of the human being as subjective, dynamic, temporal, fluid, and grounded; rationalists, as objective, unchanging, eternal, and abstract. In reading existentialists’ work, the reader would think that the human being is essentially a dynamic subject in place of a stagnant thinker, but never both. Similarly, truth for the human being is seen as either subjective or objective, but not both. With such emphasized contrast, ‘existence’ becomes a concept that stands as a symbolic counterpoint to reason. This is the reason-existence binary. The reason-existence binary is undesirable and stunts the progress existentialism might make in answering the basic ontological question. The existentialists intended to reclaim the dynamic aspect of the human being in an effort to balance out the extreme rationalism preceding them. However, by presenting existence in contrast to, rather than alongside, reason, existentialism merely designated the human being to another extreme. The existentialists’ failure of a balancing act reveals itself as an issue within their own systems of thought. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre all grapple with tensions resulting from the binary within their own philosophies. Part I: Limitations of the Binary Manifested as Existentialist Tensions Kierkegaard’s Unintended Inverse Hegelianism When Kierkegaard states that “subjectivity is truth”, he effectively turns Hegel (who saw objectivity as the one legitimate truth) on his head (Kierkegaard – Translation: Hong and Hong 1978). Kierkegaard rejects the hyper-objective, linear, rational, and systematic nature of Hegelianism and purposefully aims to be anti-systematic and anti-rationalist. However, Kierkegaard himself proposes that an individual must go through three stages (the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious) in order to encounter a true self (Kierkegaard – Translation: Hong and Hong, 1978). These are the stages that an individual encounters when turning inward in his or her own subjectivity. The final stage climaxes in paradox and culminates in a person of faith. So then, it seems that Kierkegaard’s philosophy does entail a system that we must acknowledge in order to understand our own being. The irony is that by protesting objectivity with subjectivity, Kierkegaard unwittingly creates his own dialectical system and becomes the mirror image of the systematic and idealistic Hegelianism that he intended to counter. Theodor W. Adorno calls Kierkegaard’s philosophy “inverse Hegelianism” since the historical dialectic of objective ‘Reason’ in Hegelian philosophy is parallel to Kierkegaard’s inward dialectic of the subject’s subjectivity. Whereas the Hegelian subject must look further and further outwards to discover truth and the authentic self, the Kierkegaardian subject must turn deeper and deeper inwards to discover truth and the faithful self (Adorno – Translation: Hullot-Kentor, 1989). Thus, whereas Hegel’s setting and subject is all of history, Kierkegaard’s “objective inwardness strictly excludes objective history”, so that “history vanishes” in Kierkegaard (Adorno – Translation: Hullot-Kentor, 1989). However, without any sense of history, what is left in Kierkegaard’s philosophy is the abstract self posed against the abstract universal, interacting in a subject-object dialectic that Adorno calls “Hegel [inverted and interiorized]” (Adorno – Translation: Hullot-Kentor, 1989). That is, Kierkegaard neither avoids systematizing the process of the self understanding its own being nor refrains from abstracting (i.e. a self without a concrete history is an abstract self). In short, Kierkegaard fails to fully account for the existing subject and only manages to postulate it against the thinking subject. Heidegger’s Absurd Waiting Heidegger’s dasein is both being-in-the-world and being-not-of-this-world. That is, we cannot seek to understand our being as existing separate from the world we exist in and yet, there is the curious truth that we are born into and pass away from the world. We “come from” and “go away to” someplace not of this world. From this, Heidegger concludes that the significance and uniqueness of our time in this world are due to our temporality. As finite beings, every moment in time is unique. Our specific time also defines each of us as a unique being traveling different paths and encountering different ontological possibilities which become available to us by virtue of our specific past and present (Heidegger – Translation: Macquarrie and Robinson, 1962). Time is therefore responsible for determining the significance of all the opportunities we might have in this world. But since the importance of time itself is that it represents our sudden arrival and departure from this world from who knows where, then meaning itself also comes from who knows where. Heidegger wrote Being and Time in the 1920s and 1930s, directly after the First World War. Like the famous Lost Generation, Heidegger also addresses an era when the traditional ideologies and frameworks that gave us social identities and gave our actions meaning were quickly fading out. (Preceding Heidegger, Nietzsche defines that era as an era in which “God is dead” in contrast to previous generations which offered “God” and by extension, Christian morals, tradition, etc (Nietzsche – Translation: Nauckhoff, 2001). God and the institution of religion and tradition provided frameworks of significance which dasein could attach itself to find significance.) The era bore a sense of decay. The hollowness of a hollow man was no longer an individual problem, but an indicator of a lack of possibilities in the world of that generation. If the world shines through an authentic dasein (being-in-the-world), but the world itself is decaying, then an authentic dasein would decay instead of thrive. Heidegger recognizes this issue and offers the solution of reorienting dasein in order to increase its receptivity of meaning. Essentially, Heidegger states that if there is less meaning in the world, then we should be more receptive to it so that we can get more of it. If dasein is taken solely as a being in time, an increase in receptivity simply means a more anxious waiting for meaning to come. This is because meaning only comes from that “other world” where we came from to be born and where we go once we die. But Heidegger does not give any deadline for how long dasein must wait for meaning to appear. Indeed, he cannot even guarantee that meaning will ever come back. But if we are headed towards a meaningless world, we would be waiting forever. In Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, two individuals “actively” wait in a wasteland for “Godot”, an unknown figure who promises meaning, but cannot promise when, where, or how. This uncertain, but hopeful waiting depicts the issue that Heidegger’s solution runs into. In terms of time, Heidegger’s solution becomes a rather paradoxical (and apparently, parody-able) form of “active” waiting. Heidegger tries to reclaim our being from abstraction by positing dasein, but his philosophy is affected by the binary which separates existing from knowing. Ultimately, he ends up in a strange position of hopeful absurdism. In this position, he relies on a vague abstraction that renders even the being-in-the-world altogether hazy and opaque. Thus, despite Heidegger’s intent to have dasein reconquer itself as a grounded being, we arrive at a point where the absence of a metaphysical quality of dasein results, once again, in abstraction Sartre’s Difficulty with Dualism When Sartre introduces the factical self and the transcendent self to the reader, he explicitly states that this division exists only because they are necessary to parse out the modes of being. Sartre does not intend to propose a metaphysical dualism, where the factical and transcendent self are truly two different selves or beings. Although Sartre posits a disclaimer of his dualism, there is still ultimately a tension in saying that being-in-itself and being-for-itself are mutually exclusive and yet every human being is somehow both. Sartre’s preoccupation with being as always more than it appears in a given situation sits in direct contrast to reason, which only applies to appearances. This contrast motivates Sartre to depict human beings as half factual knowers and half fluid, illogical beings. This is an uncomfortable division both because our rational and existing selves do not exist unequivocally separate from each other and because we also have a nonrational self. Sartre himself identifies this issue as the “identity nihilation” or “internal negation” issue, stating that his view renders the self in a perpetually unstable equability where identity as absolute cohesion rejects diversity and unity can only be a synthesis of multiplicity (Sartre – Translation: Barnes, 1956). The self, as both whole and diverse, is never quite captured due to the oppositional nature between existence and reason that Sartre assumes. *** The binary itself is not easily grasped, but its effects are discernible. The tensions that emerge from the binary reveal that if the assumptions which underlie the argument are extreme and unfounded, the content itself is affected and distorted. To understand this in a more general sense, it is often what we consider possible, rather than the reality of the situation, which dictates the outcome. If we never venture down certain pathways because we never consider their existence, then those avenues of thought will never open to us, not because they cannot exist, but because we consider them unable to exist. The philosopher Derrida speaks to the violence of writing, of naming things, and of defining spectrums and hierarchies through names (Derrida, 1976). Writing separates, and it is within those separations that battles are fought. Writers always write in the context of previous thought, and so even though their intentions are to break cycles of thought, the methodology of writing itself binds them to reiterate the same structural violence that previous writers have also engaged in. In short, modern philosophers often end up writing within the dialogue set up by previous philosophers and find it difficult, if not impossible, to break out of that dialogue and introduce new possibilities. If the possibilities of the conversation are predetermined by restrictions on expression, the historical limitations will stunt the conversation and block the creation of new pathways of thought. While Kierkegaard provides an illuminating analysis of how Hegelianism neglected essential considerations for how the existing subject should come to understand itself, at the same time, Kierkegaard’s reactionary philosophy proves detrimental to the originality of his own philosophy. The content is simply turned on its head, but the ultimate goal of understanding remains out of reach. Heidegger’s concept of dasein reorients ontology into a humbler form, reminding us that we do not experience Being except as being-in-the-world and as being-towards-death. He criticizes the philosophical tradition of forgetting that our existence is wholly about being present-in-the-world. However, Heidegger falls prey to his own criticism when he separates human existence from whatever truth or meaning there was to be found in our existence. To Sartre’s credit, Sartre identifies and denounces the binary from the very beginning. Yet, despite this awareness, his own philosophy ends up depending on conceptual divisions born from the binary. What all of these philosophers point out but struggle to prove within their own philosophies is that the human being is always the meeting ground for both reason and existence. By imposing this binary, we become stuck with a mentality that cannot imagine outside of you are either this or that. There is no space for a new beginning because violence has already been done unto the space of possibility. While one side can point out the defects of the other, unfortunately, the inverse of a structure does not overturn the system nor introduce anything new, and so it cannot successfully escape the faults or solve the problems of the original structure. Inversion and rejection are still confined to the original sphere of thought and that influence is impossible to hide, even though the rest of the content may be revolutionary and inspiring. That is why the existence-reason binary limits existentialists’ answer to the ontological question of the self knowing its own being. Part II: Rethinking the Transcendental Self In light of the existence-reason binary, I offer an interpretation of a self that is transcendental and nonrational. The nonrational transcendental self is a transcendental self because it allows for a shift in perspective without loss of identity. It is nonrational because the shift is unconcerned with justifications. There is no categorizing or narrating the experience for a greater purpose. There is no expectation of ‘what ought to happen’. There is no need to prioritize anything within the experience. The nonrational transcendental self is the self that experiences its own being without having to focus or impose on it. It is the self that exists alongside the constant question of suicide and it is the self that arises when we experience moments of beauty. *** Section A: The Question of Suicide Camus famously said, “There is only one really serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy” (Camus – Translation: O’Brien, 1991). Camus’ infamous line was already preceded by a long line of thinkers grappling with the morality and rationality of suicide. St. Augustine, inspired by Plato and followed by Aquinas, states the Christian prohibition on suicide. When intolerable evils descend upon us, the truly pious withstand the onslaught and prove their virtue, whereas those who escape by suicide have sullied God’s gift of life to us (Saint Augustine – Translation: Paolucci, 1962). Suicide was seen as the ultimate unrepentable sin. St. Augustine also considers suicide irrational, pointing out that if suicide is meant to preserve happiness or escape unhappiness by avoiding pain, then that is foolishness for there is no happiness to be found in either giving up in the midst of fighting evil or in knowing that you can commit suicide (Saint Augustine – Translation: Paolucci, 1962). Then, David Hume famously wrote a defense of suicide as a rational act, stating, “suicide is no transgression of our duty to God” (Hume, 1783). God granted all beings and things with their proper functions and powers (Hume, 1783). A river has the power to stop man because God willed it. Yet, if man is able to create machinery that utilizes energy from a river or can divert a river from its course, this interaction causes no discord in the creation and would not be a crime in the eyes of God (Hume, 1783). God has given us the ability to judge and enact such behavior. Likewise, Hume asserts that there is no crime of “turning a few ounces of blood from their natural channels” (Hume, 1783). In this case, God has given us the ability to judge and enact suicide. Furthermore, just as the river turns according to the laws of matter and motion, so does the human body react according to the laws of nature as set by God (Hume, 1783). Hume offers several situations in which suicide might be consistent with our self-interest (e.g. age, sickness, and misfortune), but is also quick to state, “no man ever threw away life, while it was worth keeping… for such is our natural horror of death” (Hume, 1783). Thus, if someone ultimately judges that he or she is in a situation so haunted by suffering that it cannot be relieved except through death, then not only is committing suicide not a moral transgression, but it is also a perfectly rational act. Richard Brandt furthers Hume’s argument that suicide can be rational by way of a utilitarian argument. Brandt argues that a rational agent can make a sufficiently informed comparison about the likely utility between the two possible futures of survival and suicide and make an intelligible and rational choice from there. However, in response to Brandt, Christopher Cowley suggests that the concept of rationality does not apply to suicide. Judgements about suicide, such as those espoused by Brandt, are certainly intelligible (Cowley, 2006). However, these judgments are “third-person descriptions… implicitly assuming rationality” and “[maintaining] a clinical detachment” so that we end up “talking about the victim rather than to or with the victim” (Cowley, 2006). Cowley thus points out that asking the rational question of “what would anyone do in this situation” is more an abstract hypothesis and less about the agent and the agent’s act of suicide (Cowley, 2006). Furthermore, debating the rationality of suicide misses a major point, that rationality is essentially future-oriented. We call an act rational or irrational by presupposing a future in which we will have to face the consequences of that act (Cowley, 2006). Therefore, while we might consider someone’s reason for suicide rational or irrational, suicide itself cannot be properly judged by rationality because it is the erasure of the future that is a precondition of judging an act as rational or irrational. Thus, Cowley “rejects the exhaustive dichotomy between rational and irrational” because both concepts “run out” and fail to provide a language that sufficiently accounts for a discussion on suicide (Cowley, 2006). Rationality presumes justification, which not only assumes a future but also abstracts from the subject’s experience. However, if Cowley’s point stands, then how are we to approach the question of suicide? Who is the agent in question, if not a rational agent? Insofar as suicide is a human question, the answer relies heavily on how we understand the human being. Here, I hope that my notion of the nonrational transcendental self will help articulate our experience with the issue of suicide. Notice this: Although Camus and others have posed the question of suicide intellectually, we actually experience this question at every moment of our conscious lives. We do not necessarily confront the question (in that we do not feel compelled to justify our existences to ourselves every passing second), but simply by virtue of living, we exist alongside it. The rational self often resists; justifications often mean “this despite that.” But the nonrational self simply exists, without justification, and therefore, without resistance. It does not strive to endure because it is not about life, it is simply living. When a wind passes through the grass, we do not think the grass “resists.” Instead, it simply exists in its swaying along with the wind. Afterwards, we reason that the wind made the grass sway, and while this is very much true, this is a justification after the initial experience, where reason serves as a convenient framework with which to understand and recognize our experiences. Thus, the nonrational transcendental self settles the anxiety of needing a reason to live in an arbitrary world by accepting that it simply is, outside of want and reason. As the question of suicide is reborn every moment, so this self co-exists alongside that question. Returning to Camus’ question, I realize that suicide is not simply a grand philosophical issue, but an ever-present question. Of course, as Cowley admits, suicide can be discussed in terms of rationality. I think that this makes sense. After all, suicide has a widespread effect, and it is only natural that we abstract from the agent and act itself in an attempt to more deeply understand why such tragic events happen. However, the question of suicide also exists separate from our reasons to live or die. We know this because we have all witnessed that the reality of suicide exists beyond rationality. Sadly, many people who have every reason to live also die. We, as survivors, turn to religion and philosophy and literature, searching for reasons that might explain why they had to go when clearly, they had so much to live for. But regardless of the many arguments we might construct to justify a longer life, the insurmountable fact is that they have passed out of this shared world. As such, suicide is neither rational nor irrational. It is nonrational, which means that although existence can be rationalized, existence is or is not despite the rationalization. Suicide, not as an act to be judged, but as a constant question hand-in-hand with living, illuminates this aspect of the self. The nonrational self is also transcendental. The common understanding of transcendental is “a noumenal realm above”, but the nonrational transcendental self in this situation is a “settling.” The self that transcends life-or-death is not a self that rises above existence, but a self that is simply situated in one’s own being. Even facing the question of suicide, the nonrational transcendental self does not reach towards immorality nor does it turn within itself. There is no extortion and no resistance. It simply exists as it is. It is the mind before the mind is filled with thoughts. It is the state of existence that occupies the middle ground between wanting to live and wanting to die. This middle ground is what often allows people to survive depression, which sometimes manifests as an indifference to life and inability to hope. Think about the reverse situation. Many people who feel they have no reason to live continue to live. Whether it is because we are depressed or uncertain or have simply never seriously entertained the question, we can exist without a reason to live. While Hume and Brandt rightfully argue that we can make value judgments about what sort of life is worth living, the rational argument does not account for the actual state of our existence. Why not? This is because for human beings, the absence of reason to live is not a reason to die. Therefore, to discuss suicide as though it aligns with a linear spectrum of rationality is to collapse this inequality and equate the absence of reason to live with a reason to die. This discounts the struggle that many depressed and/or suicidal people struggle through. But intuitively, we all understand this inequality and we recognize the significance of the inequality. It is why we feel that there is no reason sufficient enough to justify suicide. However, for this intuitive truth to be true, we must grant that the human being exists and sees itself capable of existing outside the reason-existence binary and occupying the middle ground of the nonrational transcendental self. Section B: The Moral and Aesthetic Judgment Before I further explain the notion of a nonrational transcendental self, I wish to reference other types of judgments that are nonrational. Since the kinds of judgments we make portray the kind of being we are, I think this will help us to imagine concepts of the self outside the existence-reason binary. *** After his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant pursued other capacities of self-representation and self-understanding in the Second and Third Critiques, respectively. The Critique of Practical Reason contains Kant’s moral philosophy, which is premised on the principle that we must understand ourselves as we appear to ourselves. In other words, even if reason postulates a phenomenal determinism in the physical world, since we appear to ourselves as moral beings and morality implies agency, we must also take ourselves to be agents capable of affect. The reasoning here is practical: Given how we appear to ourselves, we must believe the necessary condition which allows for this appearance. Specifically, given that we appear to ourselves as moral agents, we must necessarily take ourselves to be free agents (Kant – Translation: Beck, 1956). This differs from the pure reason of Kant’s First Critique, which was discussed as a cognitive capacity functioning largely to structure our experience through concepts and categories. However, the Kantian self that engages in practical reason and which makes the moral judgment is inequivalent to a nonrational transcendental self. The nonrational transcendental self is not concerned with its own appearance or with self-justifications. Kant’s moral judgment is nonetheless a rational judgment, only it has to do with practical reasoning, which is bottom-top because it reasons from appearance whereas pure reasoning, which structures based on a priori conditions of cognition and pure categories of laws and structures, works top-down. To translate this back into our discussion of suicide, saying that the nonrational transcendental self exists alongside the ever-present question of suicide is inequivalent to saying that a person has a moral incentive to live. The moral incentive often appears as a justification, supplying a ‘despite’ in an intellectual, but not necessarily existential problem. Kant’s Third Critique, the Critique of Judgment conveys the aesthetic judgment (i.e. a judgment of beauty). The aesthetic judgment employs the individual’s capacities of imagination and understanding to enter into the mental state of freeplay (Kant – Translation: Walkter, 1963). While both imagination and understanding draw inspiration from the manifold of intuition, they are pure faculties or free faculties. Imagination is the synthesis of a manifold of intuition, and the synthesis is not totally predetermined by the content of the manifold. For example, in imagination, the intuitions of a horse and a horn can be freely synthesized into a unicorn. Understanding is the realm of pure categories (in contrast to concepts which require and apply to specific objects). In understanding, there are unifying laws (e.g. causation) that shape our experience of phenomena without discriminating between empirical details. Then, for freeplay to be the interaction of two pure mental capacities means that the aesthetic judgment is “merely subjective” (Kant – Translation: Walkter, 1963). That is, freeplay occurs only when the subject has removed him/herself from the world (i.e. become a disinterested subject) and re-presented an object that is no longer in front of him/her to him/herself. The aesthetic judgment deals only with this re-presentation. So, an aesthetic judgment does not apply to the object itself the way concepts do. The aesthetic judgment is thus another judgment different from a purely rational judgment. However, there is a quirk in the aesthetic judgment: Despite being completely subjective, our aesthetic judgment necessitates an ought; that is, everyone else ought to agree with our judgment of what is beautiful. Although an aesthetic judgment cannot claim logical universal validity (since it does not refer to a concept), we present our judgments of beauty with a universal voice (Kant – Translation: Walkter, 1963). Thus, the aesthetic judgment “must involve a claim to subjective universality” (Kant – Translation: Walkter, 1963). For Kant, the aesthetic judgment, in bringing together subjectivity and universality, allows us to re-imagine or re-present the human as a being whose sociability and individuality are seamless. In this way, the aesthetic judgment offers an alternative to the existence-reason binary because freeplay, the pure categories of reason, is communicable. However, it is worth noting that there is something a bit sinister about the ‘ought.’ Imagine that in your encounter with the question of suicide, someone comes up to you and tells you that you ought to live. It is a patronizing remark on behalf of the speaker. Hence, this ‘ought’ which is essential in rendering a statement into a judgment and initially seems to prove the human capacity for freeplay and sociability, actually betrays that the aesthetic judgment is not only about subjective appreciation and value, but also assumes an objective universal validity. While the Kantian subject of the aesthetic judgment offers an alternative to the self shuttling back and forth within the reason-existence binary, it is also not quite equivalent to the nonrational transcendental self. The nonrational transcendental self has no reason to prescribe an “ought” to anyone else. Since it is free from reason or desire, it has no need to prove itself or to display its faculties by way of judgments. As we shall see, the nonrational transcendental self appears less in a judgment of beauty and more in a moment of beauty. Section C: From a Judgment of Beauty to a Moment of Beauty The meeting ground of reason and existence and the full-fledged appearance of the nonrational transcendental self occur in a moment of beauty. The novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog illustrates the reveal of the nonrational transcendental self in a moment of beauty. In the story, we meet a young girl named Paloma who very rationally comes to the conclusion that life is not worth staying for and that suicide is the best option (Barbery, 2006). At the end of the novel, Paloma rescinds this decision of suicide, not because she finds some rational reason that justifies her life or tells her that things are bound to get better, but because Paloma discovers for herself that what makes life worthwhile is the inexplicable and nonrational moments of beauty that one encounters amidst, alongside, and even within the suffering that seems to be most of life. Paloma’s life seems to take a turn for the better when she meets Madame Michel, the concierge, and Kakuro Ozu, a new occupant of one of the luxury apartments. But then, without any particular cause and certainly without a satisfying rational justification (i.e. a mad man’s dance is no reason for someone to die), Madame Michel is hit by an automobile and dies. Paloma feels then what it might mean to die, what it really means to face a “never again” (Barbery, 2006). In essence, she suddenly acquires a newfound awareness of her own experiencing. Then, Paloma experiences a moment of beauty. As she and Kakuro Ozu pass through a courtyard, both of them solemn with grief at Madame Michel’s passing, they hear music drifting down from above. Paloma “stopped short… took a deep breath and let the sun warm [her face while she] listened to the music drifting down from above” and she felt that: “There’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty… It’s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never… Beauty, in this world.” (Barbery, 2006) To explain why Paloma’s moment of beauty was transcendent, first we must consider how human beings are frequently obsessed with playing the heroes and heroines of our own lives, sometimes to the point of playing our own villains. We impose ourselves onto events and other people to try to fit them into our narratives, which we use to self-justify and to explain ourselves to other people. Recognition is important to us. We often have this deep-rooted fear that we will not exist unless we define ourselves, but these definitions do not seem to be authentic unless others acknowledge them. So, we attempt to paste certain labels onto ourselves to garner attention from others. In this way, rationalism (as justification of narratives and labels) is our long-valued method of proving to ourselves and others that we exist at all. Reason has suddenly gained the illusive quality of being necessary to exist. But whether it is the rationalists attaching existence to what is considered “objective” and “immortal” or the existentialists equating the self with subjectivity, the one thing that remains when all else is stripped away from us is a response to the same fear. The question of how the self might understand its being has long been motivated by the anxiety that our existence may not truly be an opportunity for narrative or significance. Thus, philosophy has a natural habit of referring the human being to things they consider visible and indispensable in the hopes that we, too, must be so. However, when Paloma experiences the beauty of music, residing in one ephemeral but suspended moment, her newfound awareness allows for a shift in perspective. With her mind settled from a deeper understanding of life, the beauty of the music enters and shifts her perspective so that in that moment, she is no longer concerned with proving, justifying, or defining her own existence. In that moment, she is no longer obsessed with playing the hero. Paloma assumes the role of passerby, allowing and enjoying the music that is taking center stage in her experience. Thus, our encounter with a moment of beauty allows us to relinquish our need to prove our own existences without threatening our identities and we re-situate ourselves into the existence of a passerby or watcher without considering it a degradation or loss of self, but as the self taking a deep breath and for a moment, just settling into itself. To step away from the need to justify ourselves and re-affirm ourselves is to experience our own being as transcendent and our energy as nonrational (i.e. directionless and not aiming to be applied to anything). In more casual terms, you just are and you are enough to appreciate the moment for what it is. This is why Kant’s moral self is not the nonrational transcendental self. Kant’s moral self arises from a need to understand ourselves given how we appear to ourselves, but the nonrational transcendental self, which is what we are when we encounter moments of beauty or when we live alongside suicide, is not concerned with how we appear to ourselves. Paloma describes the moment of beauty as a moment of “time suspension.” It is the “always within never.” This is interesting because time is one of the Kantian transcendental conditions. So, if we are in a realm of suspended time when we encounter a moment of beauty, then experiencing beauty is not a type of ‘knowing.’ Time and space are simultaneously extended and absorbed and the vanity of the self connected with these determinations fades away. To describe Paloma as “standing where the music is” is normally a confusion of terms that fails to define her, but it is the realm of the nonrational and transcendental, which is the same realm as the middle ground between the absence of a reason to live and a reason to die. Pure experience, which involves both existence and reason but is not confined by either, is an open realm where all things that ground us may shift with no threat to our existence. Furthermore, if Paloma’s experience happens in time suspension, then we cannot expect it to happen or try to prolong it. With time suspension, possibility and actuality exist only insofar as they exist in each other. But without expectation, there can be no prescription. Thus, the nonrational transcendental self which appears in a moment of beauty differs from the Kantian subject making an aesthetic judgment in that the former is not considered with universal recommendations. The nonrational transcendental self is the middle ground devoid of the three cornerstones that inevitably create binaries: expectation, justification, and definition. Another character in The Elegance of the Hedgehog is Jean Arthens, who is the son of the previous resident of Monsieur Ozu’s apartment. When we first encounter Jean Arthens, Renee describes him as “a drug addict, a sad wreck, … no more than a tortured body staggering through life on a razor’s edge” (Barbery, 2006). Through her encounter with him, Renee sadly recognizes that as human beings “we all must fall” at some point and that even before the fall, nobody quite knows “what [this war is that] we are waging, when defeat is so certain… Step by step we clear the path toward our mournful doom” (Barbery, 2006). But then, weeks later, Jean reappears as a far healthier person, somebody who, “once so very close to the abyss, has visibly opted for rebirth” (Barbery, 2006). Renee wonders at his transformation, asking herself, “How is one reborn after a fall?” (Barbery, 2006). Jean tells Renee that what “practically saved his life” was none other than the “pretty little red and white flowers” that Renee had planted (Barbery, 2006). He explains that although “[he did not] know why”, he “used to think about those flowers all the time… and it did [him] good” (Barbery, 2006). Renee is amazed that a “camellia can change fate” (Barbery, 2006). Renee could not have reasonably known that Jean would have viewed her flowers in such a miraculous manner. Jean himself could not have reasonably anticipated his reaction. But the why was unimportant. The flowers were beautiful to him and in that moment of beauty, the nonrational transcendental self came forth. After her encounter with Jean, Renee asks herself those unanswerable questions of life: “Did he see [the pathways of hell]? How is one reborn after a fall? What new pupils restore sight to scorched eyes? Where does war begin, where does combat end?” Her answer is: “Thus, a camellia” (Barbery, 2006). Renee’s answer does not make any rational sense. It is nonrational, and in a beautiful way, it is transcendental. Paloma’s music in the sunlight despite Madame Michel’s death and Jean Arthens’ camellias after a close shave with the abyss… For both Paloma and Jean, it was a moment of beauty that allowed them, not to somehow overcome their grief once and for all or even to be inspired to grit their teeth and endure, but to let go and excuse themselves from always having to save somebody else or save themselves. They no longer had to grapple with “why.” When the self sees its own transcendental non-rational being, it realizes that it is all things already. Conclusion I do not think that my reimagining of the self would escape Derrida’s wrath. As he rightly predicts, my attempt at explaining a nonrational transcendental self also succumbs to the same binary of worldly existence and reason that I critique in the first part of this thesis. In explaining why things are not some way, I find myself relying on the traits of that one way to explain my counterpoint. As Derrida points out, each new term we create in response to previous binaries is yet another appeasement for our constant need to commit violence against ourselves in the form of new justifications and differentiations, in service of so-called systematic thought. However, I believe that there are still important takeaways from my proposition of a nonrational transcendental self. First, while the nonrational transcendental self can express the binary, it is not merely the binary. It is whatever was before the binary existed. The importance of this first point is that we can open our minds to the fact that the binary did not always exist and is therefore not a necessary or restraining metaphysical truth of philosophy. In fact, I think we can come to see that up until the very point prior to the existence-reason binary, either existence or reason could have theoretically functioned like nonrationality. This binary was an arbitrary creation, which took its meaning from the circumstances it arose from (in this case, the existentialist push-back against rationalism). It is a useful binary in that it gives us a language in which to express our thoughts about two important aspects of the human being, but the danger of its arbitrariness is that we may slip into confusing its applicability into a metaphysical and necessary truth. So long as we can understand things existing beyond the binary, we shift ever closer to creating a theory which speaks true to both our experience and knowledge and are better able to step away from the temptation of fitting experience into theory. Likewise, the nonrational transcendental self, as revealed in its experience of a moment of beauty, challenges the strict distinction between the abstract and actual. Return for a moment to Kantian aesthetics. The Kantian subject of the aesthetic judgment is not identical with the nonrational transcendental self that experiences a moment of beauty for the former is defined by its capacities while the latter is unconcerned with its capacities and more engaged with the experience of beauty in that very moment. However, the Kantian notion of aesthetics is highly relevant because it illustrates the subject as able to merge abstraction and experience in the process of “freeplay.” This is significant because it illustrates that we do not have to sacrifice abstraction and conceptualization in order to experience actuality. In their efforts to reject rationalism, the existentialists try to do away with abstraction and conceptualization. However, anti-conceptualization only reinvents, rather than resolves, fundamental tensions. We see this clearly in Kierkegaard’s inverse Hegelianism. Even on the everyday level, it is plain that abandoning the abstract does not lead to freedom. Taking away all methods of conceptualizing and imagining possibilities forces a person to submit to his circumstances. His existence, in becoming only ‘actual’, is no longer connected to what is possible. In contrast, the experience of the nonrational transcendental self embraces abstraction so that a person’s subjectivity can extend beyond actuality into a more moving experience, where unrealized possibilities support the actuality of the present moment. The nonrational transcendental self is the grounds upon which object and subject experience each other as existentially inseparable (e.g. Paloma stands where the music is) as possibility and actuality shift into one another. When we experience the question of life and death (at every moment) or a moment of beauty, all conditions of an existing self are fulfilled without having to give a strict definition of its existence and capabilities. The nonrational transcendent self shows that the human being does not depend on rejecting rationality or proving its own subjectivity in order to exist as it is. Without asking for definition, the nonrational transcendental self appears to us in moments of life and beauty, demanding nothing of us except to pass through with an open mind. This is the aspect of the self that I believe became lost amidst the tensions of the existence-rationalism binary and is now reclaimed through the reimagining of the self. Footnotes 19 The "hollowness of a hollow man" is in reference to T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. (London: Oxford University Press, 1951). 20 This summary of Richard Brandt’s argument was quoted from: Christopher Cowley, “Suicide is Neither Rational nor Irrational” in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Vol. 9, No.5 (2006): p. 495. 21 I realize that transcendence is a highly loaded term. However, I specifically chose a term with a lot of baggage from the existence-reason binary in order to show that the word can be used outside of the binary. The more obvious term that I might use is “reorientational” or “resituational”. But I used transcendence to show that transcendence and reaching that freedom of shifting a position do not arise only from turning deeper within yourself or by abstracting further and further away, but simply by settling into yourself, as you are. 22 Self-justification in this context is reminiscent of the Kantian subject of the moral judgment and explaining ourselves to others is similar to the ‘ought’ that the Kantian subject of the aesthetic judgment imposes onto others. References Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy (Translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane). Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Reason in History (Translated by Robert S. Hartman). Reprint, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1953. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason (Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript in The Essential Kierkegaard (Edited by Howard Hong and Edna Hong). Reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time (Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson). Reprint, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1962. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (Translated by Hazel Barnes). Reprint, New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1956. Kierkegaard, Søren. Stages on Life’s Way in The Essential Kierkegaard (Edited by Howard Hong and Edna Hong). Reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Adorno, Theodor. Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic (Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor). Reprint, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science (Translated by Josefine Nauckhoff). Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Reprint, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Camus, Albert. The Myth Of Sisyphus, And Other Essays (Translated By Justin O'brien). Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Augustine, Saint. The Political Writings Of Saint Augustine (Edited By Henry Paolucci). Reprint, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Inc., 1962. David, Hume. Two Essays: Of Suicide And Of The Immorality Of The Soul. Reprint, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Library, 2008. Cowley, Christopher. "Suicide Is Neither Rational Nor Irrational". Ethical Theory And Moral Practice 9, no. 5 (2006): 495-504. doi:10.1007/s10677-006-9031-9. Kant, Immanuel. Critique Of Practical Reason (Translated By Lewis White Beck). Reprint, Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merill Company, Inc., 1956. Kant, Immanuel. The Analytic Of The Beautiful In Critique Of Judgment (Translated By Walkter Cerf). Reprint, New York: The Bobbs-Merill Company, Inc., 1963. Barbery, Muriel. The Elegance Of The Hedgehog. Reprint, New York: Europa Editions, 2006. Heidegger, Martin. The Basic Problems Of Phenomenology. Reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism Is A Humanism (Translated By Carol Macomber). Reprint, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945.

A Gravity Model of Civic Deviance: Justice, Natural Duties, and Reparative Responsibilities Woojin Lim Harvard College Author April 2021 Abstract: This paper presents a ‘gravity model’ of civic deviance and the principle of reparative responsibilities, addressing the question of when citizens are justified in shirking their civic obligations. Provided an unjust state, I raise the proposal that principled civic deviance (CD) should be, at the very least, permissible to varying levels as determined by a gravity equation. In select cases, I argue that CD may be obligatory. The gravity model, which sets to define the degree of permissible CD, features considerations such as the unfairness of the basic social structure, the individual extent of injustice faced, and the balance of CD-enabling natural duties against CD-restricting natural duties. In responding to one’s natural duty of justice, I claim that reparative responsibilities (RR) consign varying degrees of CD obligations, depending on the individual’s stake in injustice, beneficiary and contributory status, capacity to prevent and respond. Hence, individuals affected by an unjust state may permissibly, or necessarily, shirk their civic obligations only in line with their natural duties and RR. “[O]ne has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” — Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail What conditions justify a citizen’s deviance from their civic obligations in a constitutional democracy? And more importantly, whom does the scope of justified civic deviance encompass? A common way of justifying uncivil actions is to accept that we are only under a prima facie duty to obey particular laws (i.e. when incivility poses seriously untoward consequences or involves an act that is mala in se) and that we have no such obligation to obey all its laws. When some laws surpass a given threshold of injustice, we may be justified in disobeying those laws. On this justification, some have argued that all individuals who are subject to unjust institutions in some manner should be allowed to challenge injustice by shirking their civic norms of reciprocity. Others have argued that only those who fall beyond the scope of tolerable injustice should be allowed to shirk their civic obligations. So, where should the threshold for justified civic deviance be drawn among members bound to a scheme of reciprocity and social cooperation? Is there a way to account for the level of injustice suffered individually along some sort of tolerability gradient while also extending the scope of justified civic deviance to all those within the broader scope of unjust institutions? In this paper, I explain why an approach that selectively permits civic deviance (henceforth ‘CD’)—proposed in Tommie Shelby’s “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto”—has to be reconsidered. I then outline the structure of what I have come to think is the correct one. My most significant response to Shelby’s argument focuses on his failure to offer details on setting thresholds as to when deviant behavior is justified or at least excused. That said, I recognize that the main aim of Shelby’s paper is only to stake out the conceptual grounds for these claims and to illustrate that these are conceptual categories worth mining. I aim to engage further in that mining process and to offer an original contribution to the debate by re-examining Shelby’s threshold account. I introduce what I call a ‘gravity model’ of CD and the principle of reparative responsibilities to permit varying degrees of CD for particular oppressed groups, while sustaining permission for all to exercise CD—provided an unjust social structure, and a positive difference of natural duties wherein CD-enabling natural duties outweigh CD-restricting natural duties. By CD-justified, I will come to mean ~ (CD-forbidden) or CD-permissible, and in select cases, CD-obligatory. This paper is organized as follows. In Part I, I draw upon Shelby’s article, “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” and review some of the basic building blocks of CD. In section 1, I outline Shelby’s Rawlsian justification for CD, and in section 2, I reconstruct his application of CD to the “black ghetto underclass” of the United States. Section 3 is dedicated to pinpointing the inadequacies of Shelby’s view. When only a particular subset of the population is permitted to deviate from their civic obligations, there arises an imbalance of burden-sharing. I claim that it is unfair for those who do not suffer from intolerable injustice (and those who suffer from greater levels of intolerable injustice) to continue upholding reciprocity wherewith unjust institutions, especially if continuing to do so clashes with their natural duties. In Part II, I lay out the elements of what I believe is a more adequate approach. I begin by advancing on Shelby’s conception of the natural duty of justice. In this light, I come to understand CD as that which extends to those within the limits of tolerable injustice, and the differences in the level of intolerable injustice will be accounted for through the gravity model of CD along with the principle of reparative responsibilities (RR). Provided an unjust social structure, all affected individuals are justified in shirking civic obligations but nonetheless remain bound to natural duties and reparative responsibilities. I will finally elaborate on what I take to be the guiding conditions of permissible and obligatory CD, drawing from the modern analytical political philosophy literature. Part I: Reflections on “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” 1. Let me begin with an explanation of the preliminary concepts underlying CD. In “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto,” Shelby advances on Rawls’s apparatus of justice as fairness. Shelby builds his argument from the premise that within a liberal framework, justice, at least in part, is rooted in the political value of “reciprocity between persons who regard each other as equals,” bound together under a cooperative scheme for mutual advantage (p. 129, emphasis mine). The social, political, and economic institutions of the basic structure of society fix an individual’s initial position within society, more or less favoring some individuals in the distribution of benefits and burdens—of liberties, duties, opportunities, and material advantages. Given that the basic structure bears an immense and wide-ranging influence over an individual’s lifetime prospects, which are deeply shaped by a social structure each individual did not choose, Shelby argues that the social arrangement should be formed by institutions, i.e., governments, schools, firms, markets, and families, as to provide each individual with a “fair chance to flourish” (p. 130). In this grander scheme of reciprocity, each participant of the social structure has a legitimate claim to a fair chance not to have their life prospects diminished by the social scheme in ways that cannot be justified on impartial grounds. It is in virtue of this groundwork of reciprocity, or the principle of fair play, that ‘civic obligations’ have normative force. As a beneficiary of the primary goods afforded by the cooperative enterprise, each citizen is expected to shoulder an obligation to do their share as the arrangement requires, such that costs and benefits are divided in an equitable way. Citizens then have a duty to bear a share of the costs that are involved in the production of collective public goods. For example, they should pay taxes, obey the law, and so forth. This obligation is owed to those with whom one is cooperating, in order to maintain a fair basic structure. Each citizen of a democratic polity is ipso facto bound to civic obligations as required by the basic institutions. When a citizen evades or refuses to fulfill her civic obligations, she attempts to gain from or exploit the cooperative labor of others (‘free-riding’) without doing her fair share. The law-breaker acquires an unfair advantage over her fellow citizens, and this, in turn, warrants punishment to remove this advantage and re-establish a fair distribution of benefits and burdens among all members of the society. Shelby further claims that an individual’s fair chance to thrive is a necessary condition for reciprocity. Each citizen is bound to civic obligations only “when these institutions are just” (p. 145). Citizens therefore are modus tollens not obligated to submit to unjust institutions, or at least not to institutions that “exceed the limits of tolerable injustice” (p. 145). Institutions that bring about injustice that is so serious as to be intolerable allows special civic permissions for disadvantaged individuals, that is, deviance from civic obligations or—as I term it—CD. Since those who suffer from intolerable injustice have been deprived of their fair share of benefits from the social scheme, they are not bound by the civic norms of reciprocity they have as citizens. As to determine who falls beyond and beneath the radius of intolerable injustice, Shelby proposes the constitutional essentials standard, based on a loose criterion of adequacy. These include the basic rights of a liberal democratic regime, such as freedom of speech, conscience, assembly and association, political rights and other supplementary rights. For all citizens to be provided adequate exercise of these rights, Shelby adds, these rights should be impartially and effectively enforced, not merely codified in law, such that all citizens can have confidence that their rights will be respected by those with institutional power (p. 150). Consider a society wherein constitutional essentials remain unsecured for certain peoples, that is, the social structure deprives certain peoples of their fair share of benefits. Shelby contends that in such a society, those affected by intolerable injustice should not be expected to fulfill the civic obligations demanded by unjust institutions. This is not to say, however, that those affected by intolerable injustice should be released from moral duties altogether. Here, Shelby provides a clear distinction between civic obligations required by all proper citizens, versus natural duties, which unconditionally bind to all moral persons regardless of their associational or institutional ties. Thus, while an individual beyond the limits of tolerable injustice may deviate from civic obligations, at no point in time can any person permissibly abandon natural duties. One striking natural duty that Shelby highlights is the natural duty of justice. Drawing from the Rawlsian project, the two sub-principles of this natural duty are as follows: for each individual (1) to uphold and comply with just and efficient institutions when they do exist, and (2) to support the establishment of just and efficient institutions when they do not yet exist. The ‘positive’ natural duty of justice provides reason for CD, while its ‘negative’ form provides reasons for individuals not to deviate from their civic obligations. 2. Implementing these concepts into practice, Shelby pictures the plight of the black ghetto underclass in the United States. Shelby describes a widely assumed narrative about the urban poor, wherein residents live in the dark ghetto due to their self-defeating attitudes and malicious conduct, and thus violate legitimate expectations for civic reciprocity, including a duty to obey the law and support themselves through licit jobs. Under such misinformed narratives, when the ghetto poor engage in criminal activity (i.e., theft, drug-dealing, prostitution) or refuse to accept menial, low-paying, unsatisfying jobs, these actions appears to be “a failure of reciprocity on their part” (p. 146). Such attitudes call for acts of CD to be characterized as irresponsible lawbreaking and unenterprising criminality, and for such acts to be rightfully prosecuted and punished. Shelby contends that this is the wrong conclusion to draw, however, since the mere existence of the dark ghetto—with its “combination of social stigma, extreme poverty, racial segregation… and shocking incarceration rates”—proves its incompatibility with any meaningful form of reciprocity among free and equal citizens (p. 150). There is sufficient reason to believe that the constitutional essentials standard is not currently met in dark ghettos of the United States. Since the black ghetto poor live under the rule of institutions that exceeds the limits of tolerable injustice, they thereby have a legitimate claim of deviance from civic obligations. That is to say, when the ghetto poor engage in criminal activity, refuse to accept menial jobs, or bear contempt for society, disrespecting the authority of the law qua law, they do not “violate the principle of reciprocity or shirk valid civic obligations” (p. 151). If the social scheme miserably fails to embody the value of reciprocity for a certain group of peoples, those who are deprived of their fair share of benefits from social cooperation should not be required to reciprocate in civic obligations. There exist no valid civic obligations demandable from the victims of intolerable injustice, especially when the unaffected others—albeit unknowingly—profit from the unjust social structure. Again, even if a society is deeply stained by injustice, moral duties remain owed to one another in the form of natural duties. Natural duties, including the duty not to be cruel, to help the needy and the vulnerable, not to cause unnecessary suffering, to respect the moral personhood of others, to help bring about just institutions, must be satisfied in the enactment of CD. Forms of deviant behavior that are compatible with natural duties, for instance, shoplifting and petty theft, may be conceived as permissible. Other extremes of deviance—for instance, some forms of gangsterism, which involves the use of “violence, threats, and intimidation, to forcibly extract money, goods, and services from others... [maiming] and even [killing]” (p. 137)—violate natural duties, namely the duty not to be cruel, not to cause unnecessary suffering, to show respect for the moral personhood of others, etc., and thus are always morally unjustified for all people, regardless of the inequity of a social scheme. On this regard, we may rule out forms of CD that involve mala per se, while still permitting CD acts that involve mala prohibita. To briefly recapitulate, Shelby’s discussion brings into light a discussion of fairness and political obligations. Shelby’s view is that the empirical facts show that the conditions of political obligations do not hold. He proposes that in unfair, oppressive, or unjust social structures, individuals are no longer bound to a scheme of reciprocity, while nonetheless having natural duties. 3. Up to this point, my discussion—and certainly that of Shelby’s—has revolved around the implications of justifiable civic deviance for the ghetto poor, or those beyond the threshold of intolerable injustice. The question now extends to what civic obligations, permissible deviance, and natural duties are to be for those within the limits of tolerable injustice, including the benefactors of the unjust social regime. For individuals who are not themselves affected by intolerable injustice, Shelby’s understanding of CD asserts that they should nonetheless remain bound to the duties of the unjust regime, and they would not be justified in shirking their valid civic obligations. On Shelby’s account, such individuals remain bound to a cooperative reciprocal scheme to do their fair share as a beneficiary of the primary goods afforded by the social scheme, even if there are those who may not be bound to it (i.e. the ghetto poor). Let me invoke a hypothetical example to illustrate this point. Imagine a team of laborers— Dongbaek, Yongsik, and Jongryul—who sign a contract to work cooperatively under a scheme of mutual advantage in a table-lifting business. If laborer Dongbaek does not receive a fair share of benefits for the work that she performs in lifting an equivalent proportion of the table’s weight, and if this were to amount to Shelby’s standard of intolerable injustice, then Dongbaek may permissibly deviate from her civic obligations, that is, to drop her end of the table and walk away without being subject to moral criticism on this basis. Shelby’s argument continues in the implication that Dongbaek’s deviance does not render null the civic obligations (to move the table) owed by laborers Yongsik and Jongryul, who remain fairly compensated for lifting the table. Since Shelby’s standard of fairness is merely that of adequacy, let’s imagine that Yongsik well-beyond meets the fairness requirement (i.e. Yongsik receives an attractive bonus on top of his standard compensation), whereas Jongryul barely meets the adequacy threshold (i.e. Jongryul is provided with minimally adequate wage compensation for his labor). Regardless of Yongsik’s and Jongryul’s differing proximities from the threshold of tolerable injustice, insofar as they are fairly compensated—according to Shelby’s definition, not the Rawlsian standard—as beneficiaries of the (unjust) reciprocal scheme, Yongsik and Jongryul, who are not themselves affected by intolerable injustice, may not exercise CD. There seems to arise an interesting conflict here. Shelby’s initial words on what establishes civic obligation is as follows: “[E]ach citizen has an obligation to fulfill the requirements of the basic institutions… when these institutions are just” (p. 145, emphasis mine). This implies, in converse, that when these institutions are unjust, each citizen bears no obligation to fulfill the civic requirements of the basic institutions. Extending on this suggestion, perhaps the standard of appropriate CD should be set at a lower bar, more broadly, such that the mere existence of unjust institutions invalidates a baseline of civic obligations for all citizens. As to delineating precisely what set of civic obligations consists of this threshold is a subject for further study. When Yongsik and Jongryul—after Dongbaek’s departure—now must lift heavier weights of the table for the same wage, they may decide that this entire table-lifting venture is fundamentally exploitative, skewed from the ground up, since the social structure generates enormously unfair distributions. In continuing to uphold this scheme along with its unjust institutions, Yongsik and Jongryul sustain injustice, perhaps contravening on positive natural duties, notably that of justice. All the while, other negative natural duties, for instance, the duty not to cause unnecessary suffering, prevent an extended of abuse of CD for the wrong reasons. There is sufficient reason to think that those unaffected by intolerable injustice may be permitted to shirk a baseline of civic obligations given a persisting unjust social structure (defined by some standard of unfairness). On the other side of the spectrum, imagine workers Sangmi and Gyutae, who similar to Dongbaek, suffer from Shelby’s conception of intolerable injustice: the lack of constitutional essentials. Both Sangmi and Gyutae suffer from great intolerable injustice, falling far beyond adequacy conditions. Whereas Sangmi exercises CD, Gyutae does not. Here, Dongbaek’s exercise of CD, which seems to extend symmetrically for all those affected by intolerable injustice, takes advantage of Sangmi and Gyutae (and Yongsik and Jongryul), while Sangmi’s exercise of CD gains from the persisting social cooperation of Gyutae (and Yongsik and Jongryul). Imagine a case where Dongbaek steals a loaf of bread for herself, having starved for three days. For the purpose of illustration, let’s presume that the number of days starved—of one’s and one’s dependents—is the dimension by which we measure ‘unfairness.’ If Sangmi also hopes to steal a loaf of bread for himself and his entire family who have starved for seven days, but if Dongbaek’s deviance necessarily prevents Sangmi from doing so, it seems as if Dongbaek’s CD (indirectly) takes advantage of Sangmi, and wrongly so. Both Dongbaek and Sangmi would be taking advantage of Gyutae, who, having already completed one excruciating day of work, still has no purchasable food from the bakery to feed himself and his family, starving for 12 days. Given that Gyutae continues to hold onto the table while suffering from greater intolerable injustice—defined by a more pressing need for constitutional essentials—than compared to Dongbaek and Sangmi, it seems that Dongbaek harms the innocent Sangmi and Gyutae, and Sangmi takes advantage of Gyutae, and in both cases, the worst off is harmed. Thus, a CD permissibility condition of proportionality to one’s status of injustice faced appears relevant here. Given an initial baseline of permissible CD, I find it necessary that an additional permission to CD considers the level of intolerable injustice each individual suffers as a result of the unjust basic structure, establishing a gradient of tolerability. Part II: Outline of a more adequate approach The real puzzle of CD is, then, not how to draw a threshold line for the fairness of institutions and for the adequacy of constitutional essentials, but instead, how we should be accounting for the level of injustice suffered by individuals while also extending the scope of justified CD to all individuals within the broader scope of unjust structures and institutions. I thus propose a gravity model of justified CD. This model is not intended to be taken as a literal, mathematic formula that citizens can employ to meticulously calculate their degree of permissible CD. Rather, I provide this model in the spirit of opening up alternative ways to think about CD and its implications. The model (first pass), taking into account the discussion on burden-sharing (§I.3, supra) is as follows: Permissible CD (first pass) = extent of the unfairness of the basic structure (measure of unfairness of institutions) • extent of injustice faced (measure of tolerability) The first equational factor is the baseline concerning the fairness of the rules, laws, principles, and institutions that constitute the basic social structure, or the fairness of the basic structure itself. Since this first factor is more broadly applicable, Rawls’s somewhat more demanding standard of justice as fairness could be applied here. The second factor refers to the individual measure of injustice faced: those who are subject to greater forms of (intolerable) injustice may be allowed greater CD permissions. This relation is modeled in Figure 2.1. Both Rawls’s and Shelby’s standards of fairness, the FEO and DP versus constitutional essentials, are not mutually exclusive, for they may be modeled on the same gradient as follows in Figure 2.2, with steeper inclines for each threshold crossing. Other models of fairness could be introduced here (i.e. insert dimension-D along the x-axis or add in threshold-T in place of Rawls and Shelby’s standards). In Figure 2.2, Rawls’s threshold is positioned to the left of Shelby’s since it is an ideal of justice that makes it harder for unjust societies to fulfill: it is more likely for unjust institutions not to meet the requisites of Rawls’s standard of justice as FEO and DP (footnote 7, supra) than to achieve Shelby’s fairly looser standard of adequacy. Natural duties, particularly that of justice, also play a significant role as a factor regulating CD. The second sub-principle of the natural duty of justice holds that each moral agent has a duty—in helping to bring about just rules, laws, principles, and institutions—to fight against unjust rules, laws, principles, and institutions, plausibly by means of CD. These CD-enabling (positive) natural duties may also be limited by CD-restricting (negative) natural duties, for instance, to not be cruel, etc., which impose restrictions on the exercise of CD. Considerations of alternative (i.e. legal) forms of resistance to the unjust basic structure (i.e. peaceful protests, petitions, authorized public events, and other law-respecting acts of solidarity) also fall under the category of CD-restricting natural duties. On this basis, indiscriminate and unwarranted forms of ex ante violence on the innocent can be restricted. What I call the difference of natural duties (ND difference) thus permits CD if and only if the CD-enabling factors outweigh the CD-restricting factors; if the natural duty of justice to upturn severely unjust structures compels the exercise of CD over all other natural duties. If the CD-restricting factors override the CD-enabling features, then CD may, at the very least, face moral limits. If the CD-restricting factors are so great as to cancel out the extent of the unfairness of the basic structure and the extent of intolerable injustice faced, then CD may not be justified. At this point, there arises another relevant concern on whether or not CD could be, in select cases, not only permissible or encouraged but also necessary or required. Building upon the brief mention of alternative forms of action (subsumed under ND difference), I have come to believe that certain forms of CD may be morally necessary to fulfill natural duties when all other alternatives to CD and its weak forms have been completely exhausted (footnote 26, supra). When a member of the ghetto poor, having exhausted all other (i.e. legal) alternatives of securing adequate resources to feed himself and his family, decides to steal a morsel of bread from the bakery next door, he may not merely be permitted but rather obligated to do so. For if he refuses to steal bread and feed his family, he violates the natural duties of self-respect, respect for the moral personhood of others, and duty not to cause unnecessary suffering, among others. The pressing immediacy of respect and preventable suffering for his family outweighs the dues of respect for the bakery-owners. Under some circumstances, a failure to exercise CD represents a failure to do one’s own part in upholding one’s natural duty of justice: those who blindly obey, rather than those who disobey the law, may be accused of perpetuating and sustaining vehement forms of injustice, and be accused of free-riding on their fellow citizens’ cooperative moral efforts. The need for solidarity may call upon CD not merely as a supererogatory act but rather as an obligation: when Gyutae, for instance, fails to exercise CD—which incurs on his, others’, and their shared natural duties—he might be contravening valid CD obligations. By invoking familiar normative categories, we may formulate ‘CD-justified’ in the following forms: CD-permissible or ~(CD-forbidden), and CD-obligatory. At the very least, provided an unjust social structure with its set of unjust institutions and so forth, we necessarily have CD-permissible—though to varying degrees depending on the gravity model equation—and ~(CD-forbidden). In select cases, determinable by when a neglect of CD seriously contravenes on ND, we may have CD-obligatory. I propose a further original condition to CD: the principle of reparative responsibilities (RR). Provided a case of justified CD, not only do citizens retain their natural duties (i.e. to respect others’ humanity, etc.) but also come to bear a new set of obligations—in varying degrees—to restore or re-establish reciprocity, trust, and civic cooperation in the long run. This need not be immediate. Let’s return to the table-lifting example. When a member drops their portion of the table, and when others express solidarity by dropping their portion of the table in an act of radical reform, all members are still due respect to another as equal moral persons (and perhaps the table-dropping is a vehement expression that this has not been the case), and now may be tasked with another duty to work in reallocating the burdens (or benefits) so as to provide for a fairer share of benefits (or burdens). In addition, all individuals—including those who do not eventually engage in CD—now bear the responsibility to amend these damaged social bonds, restore justice, and provide closure to affected victims. RR imposes a duty on all to work towards the adjusting and redrafting of the fundamental social conventions so as to reduce unjust laws and practices in a continued process of reflective equilibrium. In carrying forth the duty of justice, individuals equipped with greater powers and benefits (as a result of unjust institutions) should be bound to a correspondingly greater set of RR to countermand injustice; individuals (i.e. Yongsik in the table-lifters case) with a greater capacity and ability to prevent or counter injustice, in a better situated position to influence change, as well as those who are greater beneficiaries of and contributors to injustices, should be held to a greater degree of responsibility in amending unjust institutions. That said, the underlying RR extends also to the victims of intolerable injustice, as they play a part, albeit small, in sustaining unjust social structures. The ghetto poor, for instance, may not be held to the same degree of RR as the uber rich, provided that RR varies depending on an individual’s relational status in the social scheme. Since justice as fairness demands an unequal distribution of primary goods, RR extends unequally depending on the individual stake in injustice, capacity for political sway, beneficiary, and contributory status until at least society is tolerably just. RR, like any obligations, compel individuals to take action. Given these additions, my gravity model of CD may be revised as follows: Justified (Permissible/Obligatory) CD = [extent of the unfairness of the basic structure • extent of (intolerable) injustice faced] • [ND difference] in line with [ND • RR] An act of CD is justified if and only if—and to the extent that—the basic structure is unjust and the individual faces an extent of intolerable injustice, or CD-enabling factors override CD-preventing factors. Acts of CD should be undertaken with natural duties of justice and reparative responsibilities in mind, which—to varying degrees—impose the normative considerations of respect for humanity and the (eventual) restoration of social cooperation. Acts of CD are obligatory, as opposed to merely permissible, provided the exhaustion of non-CD alternatives and of the least harmful forms of CD, or when unanimously called for by the natural duty of justice. Working together, the ND difference and RR ensure that CD does not arise out of cathartic or exploitative motivations or aims (supra footnote 20) but rather occurs in line with ND and RR. It is important to note that in the equation of justified CD, I preclude concerns of political effectiveness or pragmatism. Similar to Rawls’s reasoning, the effectiveness of CD does not establish the right of deviance, but once that right is independently established, CD should be shouldered with political effectiveness in mind. As Shelby declares, if street capital is to be converted into “political capital in a resistance movement” (p. 160), the oppressed should, whenever possible, publicly register dissent. The justification of CD provides an inquiry into the nature of justice, civic obligations, natural duties, and reparative responsibilities. My gravity model of CD provides a different way of thinking about questions of civic and moral agency, and the duties that individuals should carry depending on the justness of their social structure, alongside the special obligations and responsibilities that follow from their unique standing in the basic structure. Members within unjust structures who exercise CD with respect to their natural duties and reparative responsibilities should not be, echoing Shelby’s words, “demonized, stigmatized, or otherwise dehumanized, just as surely as they should not be romanticized” (p. 160). The ultimate goal is, after all, to shape meaningful bonds of solidarity, to build meaningful political alliances, and to invite the joint action needed to establish and maintain justice.

The Duty to Use Drones The Duty to Use Drones In Cases of National Self-Defense Lina Dayem University of Chicago Author Ginevra Bulgari Vance Kelley Galen Hall Naima Okami Editors Spring 2019 Download full text PDF (14 pages) Introduction Since the tactic was first implemented, targeted killing by drones has been associated with political secrecy, dubious legality, and unsavory practices, and has thus garnered a negative reputation. In this essay, I endeavor to vindicate the use of drones, if only under the constrained circumstances of national self-defense. I argue the following: If a state can permissibly carry out targeted killings for the purpose of national self-defense, then it ought to do so with drones because of the minimized risks to soldiers and civilians. To argue this position, I first demonstrate that we should think of targeted killing as fitting into the self-defense paradigm, rather than military or law enforcement paradigms. I explain that states may permissibly engage in targeted killing when it is justified in terms of national self-defense. Next I explain how drones minimize risk to both soldiers and civilians. By combining the logic of self-defense with the principle of risk minimization, I arrive at the conclusion that in circumstances where targeted killing is necessary for national self-defense, states have a duty to use drones. Finally, I respond to potential objections about the use of drones, all of which can be addressed by improved drone policy. Military and Law Enforcement Paradigms Provide Inadequate Justification for Targeted Killing Targeted killing is a practice in which many governments engage. To justify targeted killings, theorists and politicians generally invoke one of two paradigms that permit the use of deadly force: the military paradigm and the law enforcement paradigm. These paradigms act to orient government policy—they direct how we may morally and legally behave towards our enemy. Targeted killing remains controversial because it cannot be clearly endorsed by either paradigm. The Military Paradigm The military paradigm activates the laws and conventions of war. Enemy combatants are the only parties liable to death. According to the jus in bello[1] convention, combatants can permissibly be killed during wartime without punishment (with some exceptions). Hostile treatment towards a combatant is permissible simply by virtue of combatant status, rather than any actions taken by the individual in question. In other words, a combatant’s liability to death derives precisely from assumption of the role of a soldier. In this paradigm, identifying an enemy terrorist as a combatant engaged in acts of war could enable the state to justify permissibly killing him without a trial. So, the fact that targeted killings of terrorists occur without trial suggests potential use of the logic of the military paradigm. Furthermore, in the case of the United States’ conflict with Al-Qaeda, we notice that the military paradigm seems to underlies the operative language of both parties, although it does not fully account for the conflict’s operative logic. Declaring a “War on Terror” and Jihad (Holy War)[2], respectively, implies at least nominally that each side considers the other’s fighters to be enemy combatants. The problem, of course, is that under international law a private citizen (such as Osama bin Laden) cannot declare war as that is a right granted only to sovereign states.[3] Conversely, under international law, a state cannot declare war against a non-state actor.[4] We may doubt the applicability of the military paradigm to targeted killings for several other reasons. First, terrorists willingly forgo the conventions that govern combatant status. The convention states that combatants wear the insignia of their country and carry their weapons openly.[5] Terrorists, however, do not wear uniforms, and hide amongst civilians. Of course, the main tactic of terrorists—targeting civilians—violates the jus in bello convention of noncombatant immunity. It is not only the status of the terrorists that is unclear; the status of those who carry out targeted killing is equally blurry, as civilian leaders often order targeted killings. In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a civilian organization, has the authority to command drone strikes.[6] CIA control over drone strikes blurs the line between combatant and civilian, since civilians do actively engage in hostile conduct. This further complicates traditional boundaries of warfare with respect to justice and permissibility. Finally, naming someone in advance to be placed on a hit list runs counter to the very idea of status-based liability. In war, individual soldiers on the battlefield are not identified by the enemy and specifically targeted. Rather, a soldier is attacked by another soldier as part of a relationship of hostility qua soldier.[7] In other words, a soldier is liable to be killed due to his status as a soldier, rather than because of his actions. The practice of naming a target in advance singles him out qua individual. Therefore, the naming practice is fundamentally at odds with the status-based logic of legitimate military hostility. The Law Enforcement Paradigm Political theorists and governments have also justified targeted killing under a law enforcement paradigm. These parties maintain that terrorists should be considered criminals, rather than combatants. However, the goal of law enforcement is to arrest—not kill—the criminal. By the law enforcement paradigm, it is wrong to deprive a suspected criminal of due process by killing him before a trial. Indeed, the instances where law enforcement officers can permissibly kill are restricted to cases wherein a criminal resists arrest by putting the life of officers or others at risk. In this situation, liability to death is action-based rather than status-based. In other words, the criminal has effectively forfeited their right to life by initiating an attack. Liability to death may also come after the trial as retributive justice. So in certain cases, certain crimes may be punishable by death. While the death penalty is controversial, in cases where it is legal, it also represents an instance of action-based liability as punishment for a past action. However, by its very nature, targeted killing skips the fundamental steps of arrest and trial. Placing a name on a hit-list presumes guilt, and the individual listed becomes liable to instantaneous death by drone strike without being afforded due process. Under the law enforcement paradigm, this would be considered an extrajudicial execution, tantamount to murder.[8] Invoking the Principle of Self-Defense to Justify Targeted Killings The Self-Defense Paradigm In this discussion, I will draw from the work of several authors, such as McMahan, Gross, and Finkelstein, who analyze targeted killing as an act of self-defense. The self-defense paradigm better addresses the conceptual lacunae in the military and law enforcement paradigms as they concern targeted killing, and thus maps more clearly onto the practice of targeted killing. The basic premise of the self-defense paradigm is that when there is a threat to national security, a state has a right to protect itself. Self-defense can be considered a special offshoot of the law enforcement paradigm because, as described above, it is sometimes permissible for law enforcement officers to engage in certain self-defensive practices involving lethal force.[9] This paradigm deals with the threats that terrorists pose to national security and so is preemptive in nature. In this way, the killing of a terrorist should not be conceived of as punishment or retributive justice, since the paradigm does not deal with past actions. Instead, under the self-defense paradigm, someone who has never committed an attack could be just as liable as someone who has already committed several, provided that they pose the same current threat. Indeed, under this framework, a terrorist’s past crimes only serve as an epistemic gauge for predicting the likelihood that the individual will strike again.[10] The self-defense paradigm bypasses the military paradigm’s murky combatant-noncombatant distinctions because its liability criterion centers on action rather than status. If someone poses a threat to a state, the actions a state may take against the individual are not constrained by their status. Rather, the individual’s status is irrelevant both to their liability to death as well as our ability to retaliate. The self-defense paradigm also circumvents the law-enforcement paradigm’s crucial steps of arrest and trial because it operates on the logic of preemptive justice rather than retributive justice. Like the law enforcement paradigm, the self-defense paradigm uses the logic of action-based liability to death, but in a less evident manner. A terrorist’s liability to death derives from the notion that in planning an attack, a terrorist wrongs innocent people by increasing their likelihood of harm.[11] Thus, the harm caused by the terrorist’s death would need to be proportional to the harm prevented by protecting innocents from the attack. In other words, if their death would not disrupt realization of that harm, the targeted killing is not justified. Finally, it must also be considered whether or not the targeted killing could result in dangerous unintended consequences.When these criteria are met under the self-defense paradigm, the result would be that targeted killing is permissible as an act of self-defense. In the next sections, I argue that in the cases where targeted killing is permissible, states have a duty to use drones to carry them out because drones reduce risk to both civilians and soldiers. The Duty to Minimize Risk in Cases of Self-Defense: Individual Cases To demonstrate the duty to minimize risk to civilians and soldiers in cases of national self-defense, I will employ an analogy involving individual self-defense. Imagine that an individual is attacked in a way that threatens their life. It is uncontroversial that they have the right to defend themselves against the attack. By initiating the attack, the attacker has forfeited their right not to be harmed. Because the victim’s life is threatened, responding proportionally to the attack means that they may permissibly kill the attacker, if that is the only way to thwart the attack. However, imagine that the attack occurs in a crowded location. While the victim still has the right to defend themselves, they would wrong bystanders by inflicting harm on them, or risking their harm. The bystanders, detached from the conflict, have done nothing to make themselves liable to harm. Consequently, they must minimize the harm to which bystanders are exposed. Therefore, the means by which one may defend themselves in this crowded location are constrained. For instance, while the victim may shoot the attacker in the open, the victim many not shoot indiscriminately into the crowd in order to scare the attacker away. Similarly, if the attacker hides within the crowd, it would be wrong to simply aim at the group of people if there existed high likelihood that a bystander would be harmed. Furthermore, imagine the victim had the choice between two weapons that each afford equal capabilities to thwart or end the attack. One of the weapons is more precise than the other. For example, consider a handgun in comparison to a large vehicle (to be used as a deadly weapon). By aiming a gun at the attacker, they have a lower chance of accidentally hitting a bystander than if they were to drive the vehicle into the crowd. Because the victim has the choice between the two weapons, it would be wrong to choose the car, because it poses higher risk to bystanders. These two examples demonstrate that even in the presence of bystanders the victim retains the right to self-defense, yet has a duty to minimize the risk they pose to the innocent. For the bystanders simply have the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and have done nothing to make themselves liable to harm. The duty to minimize risk even when acting in self-defense is not only a consideration which must be undertaken with respect to bystanders, but at the state level also stretches to the defensive capabilities afforded by the state to its soldiers. Consider an analogy offered by Bradley Strawser. He imagines a commander who orders their troops to take off their bullet-proof vests and run at the enemy, and concludes that the commander wrongs the troops by ordering them into a dangerous situation without the normally available protection.[12] In doing so, the commander unjustly increases their risk to harm. While there may exist important moral differences between denying defensive capability to soldiers and aiming a weapon at a crowd of bystanders, Strawser’s analogy highlights the fundamental idea that it would be wrong to increase the possibility of harm to a soldier, or civilian, through deprival of defensive capability. Applying a Duty to Minimize Risk to Cases of Self-Defense: State-Level The duty to minimize harm to bystanders in the individual case can be extended to situations of state-level self-defense as a duty to minimize the risk of harm to civilians and soldiers. If under reliable intelligence a state discovers an imminent threat to its national security, the state has a right to defend itself against that threat. But at the same time, the means available to the state for the purpose of self-defense must be bound by a duty to minimize risk to civilians and to soldiers. If a state can justifiably respond to an imminent threat of a terrorist attack, it does not have a carte blanche to employ any weapon in its arsenal. For instance, a state could launch a nuclear bomb on the city where the attacker is hiding. While this would certainly be an effective method to kill the attacker, it is a grossly disproportionate and as such obviously unjust. Instead, the state might instead choose a “boots on the ground” mission to find the individual, or any number of other more precise strategies. Any kind of armed engagement involves risk to both civilians and to the soldiers involved. As in the case of individual self-defense, it is the state’s duty to employ a strategy that offers the least risk to all parties involved. I will now explain how drone technology seems to be the obvious choice for risk reduction in such a scenario. Risk Reduction Through Use of Drones Undertaking targeted killing with drones reduces the risk of harm to a state’s own soldiers, as well as foreign civilians, in several ways. For pilots, the remote operation of unmanned weapons dramatically reduces chance of harm: drone pilots can operate from a base thousands of miles away from the conflict zone. They personally face no threat of harm, retaliation, or retribution. In contrast, engaging in a “boots on the ground” mission puts the soldiers involved at an increased risk because they are directly exposed to the hazards of a hostile territory, which leaves them open to the possibility of attack. The remote aspect of drone strikes may also reduce harm to civilians in the conflict zone. Journalist Michael Lewis perceptively reasons that because drone pilots feel secure, they are surprisingly less likely to initiate a strike out of fear or anxiety for their personal safety.[13] What Lewis articulates is that the mistakes frequently made by soldiers in the “fog of war” can be minimized by drones.[14] Moreover, drones themselves can act as intelligence-gathering machines. A target may be surveyed for months before an attack is carried out. This has several benefits. First, it confirms that the target is actually involved in terrorist activities, reducing the chance of targeting an innocent person. If the suspect is the right person, then the extensive intelligence allows the pilot to identify a pattern in the subject’s daily life so that the subject may be targeted at times when they are more likely to be alone. Furthermore, when operated with due care, drones are precise, capable of striking only a single person. As journalist Mark Bowden notes, “[A drone’s] extraordinary precision makes it an advance in humanitarian warfare. In theory, when used with principled restraint, it is the perfect counterterrorism weapon. It targets indiscriminate killers with exquisite discrimination.”[15] To ensure that its deployment is as precise as possible, operators have adopted measures to minimize civilian risk. For example, a recent review of drone procedures by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan recommended that strikes occur while the target is in a vehicle, rather than in a compound. This is because it is easier to keep track of those entering and exiting vehicles than those entering and exiting compounds, reducing the likelihood that a target’s family member or close associate will also be hit. In addition, the strike could take place on an isolated road, further reducing the risk to bystanders.[16] Even under unideal operation conditions, drone strikes are generally less deadly to civilians than other available means, such as ground strikes or piloted airstrikes.[17] Finally, the practice of targeted killings itself can reduce a conflict’s escalation and thus its casualties. Targeted killing, when justified as preemptive action as described above, functions to avoid prolonged engagement or full-scale war. Comparing the civilian casualties of war to drone strikes demonstrates clearly that conventional warfare is the deadlier of the two.[18] Thus, for the aforementioned reasons, when states can permissibly carry out targeted killing for the purpose of national self-defense, they have a duty to do so with drones because they minimize risk of harm for civilians and soldiers alike.This duty to employ drones should be understood as prima facie, a strategy that should be adopted unless specific circumstances require the use of other measures. In other words, the duty stands as long as using drone technology will minimize risk to bystanders and soldiers involved in the operation. If in a given operation, certain material limitations, geographical specificities, or procedural carelessness will cause an elevated risk of harm, the duty no longer stands. Objections Many critics object to drones on the grounds that civilians sometimes are killed in drone strikes—because of this unjust risk to civilians, they argue that the use of drones cannot be justified. I will first respond by emphasizing that my argument deals with minimizing risk, not eliminating risk altogether. To eliminate risk completely would be to advocate for pacifism. We need to compare the risk that drones pose to civilians to the risk that other weapons and armed operations pose to civilians. Recent figures indicate that in comparison to conventional measures, drone strikes have ranged from slightly to far less lethal in producing collateral damage.[19] The above objection can take on a more nuanced character, deserving a different response. Perhaps critics feel an intuitive discord between the very precise capability of the drone and the fact that it nevertheless produces civilian collateral, damage which seems to imply carelessness in drone operations. To respond to these critics, I argue that their concern has more to do with mishandling and reckless use of the technology than with a problem with the technology itself. This kind of criticism is not unique to drones; any weapon can be used well or poorly. However, I contend that because drones are known for their precision, concern over rates of collateral damage may be even more relevant than in the case of use of other weapons. As such, elevated numbers of civilian casualties may be an indication of faulty intelligence or careless policy. I reiterate that the duty to use drones is only prima facie: if drones cause or exacerbate harm—either as a result of material factors or policy faults—then the duty to use them is dissolved. Indeed, I would agree with critics that these cases call for rigorous reassessment of policy and procedure. However, I would highlight that by focusing on drone technology in discussing this problem we misplace responsibility by blaming the weapon for the faults of its operators. In his 2006 essay “Terrorism and Just War,” Michael Walzer advocates for targeted killing as a counterterrorism measure. He acknowledges that counterterrorism occurs in the grey area between war and law enforcement, and usually away from active war zones. In his view, to keep the effects of counterterrorism from resembling the effects of terrorism, it is the duty of counterterrorist fighters to take extensive measures to prevent civilian casualties. For it is the care and protection of civilians that distinguishes legitimate counterterrorist activities from the illegitimate engagement of terrorists, as terrorists do not operate with similar notions of “collateral damage.” Walzer believes this care for civilians should be upheld even more so in the case of targeted killings because they are activities outside of wartime. He concludes that “what justice demands is that the army take positive measures, accept risks to its own soldiers, in order to avoid harm to civilians.”[20] While I believe that the motivation for Walzer’s argument is noble, it rests on a false premise. For, when read carefully, we observe that Walzer takes risk as a sort of sliding scale oscillating between the two extremes of risk to soldiers or risk to civilians. Rather, it is possible to work to minimize risk for civilians without this occurring at the expense of soldiers, minimizing risks for both parties. Walzer does not seem to entertain this possibility. However, when used with due care, the drone is the most precise weapon that we have in our arsenal. Its use would minimize risk to civilians while simultaneously eliminating risks to soldiers as well. If this is truly the case, then there does not seem to be a reason that, by his criteria, Walzer would object to their use. It does not seem that acknowledging the duty to avoid harming civilians would necessarily preclude the duty to avoid harm to soldiers. Again, however, my argument for the use of drones is only a prima facie. If it is indeed the case that more civilians would be harmed by the use of drones, either due to material limitations or reckless policy, then they should not be used. Many critics argue that if drones make targeted killing easier and less risky to soldiers, states will undertake more targeted killings than they would otherwise. They worry that the easy, efficient, and asymmetric nature of drone engagement may cause operators to ignore or forget that killing is only permissible when absolutely necessary to prevent greater harm. In turn, criteria for appearing on a hit-list for such targeted killings could become weaker and weaker. Walzer expresses this concern in his essay “Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare.” He writes, “why should we think it different from the sniper’s rifle? The difference is that killing-by-drone is so much easier than other forms of targeted killing. The easiness should make us uneasy. This is a dangerously tempting technology. It makes our enemies more vulnerable than ever before, and we can get at them without any risk to our own soldiers” (italics added).[21] Therefore, he and likeminded observers assume that when there is lower risk to military personnel, the “necessity” threshold for pursuing a targeted killing would be lowered. My immediate response to such an objection is to specify that I do not argue for a blanket duty to use drones. My argument only pertains their use in justified instances of self-defense. Just because drones are tempting to overuse or abuse, it does not follow that they will definitely be misused. In a similar vein to my previous responses, I emphasize that the key is a consistent and honest drone policy, with transparency and accountability. If states consistently hold themselves to a high bar of certainty required to permissibly engage in a targeted killing, then temptation does not have to materialize into a dubious precedent. Similarly, some critics contend that the remote warfare aspect of drones will create a “video game mentality” in its operators, emboldening them to undertake even more risks. This notion, however, is simply untrue. According to a 2011 Department of Defense study, drone operators experience depression, anxiety, and PTSD at rates similar to combat pilots.[22] In the Atlantic article “The Killing Machines,” Mark Bowden, after conducting interviews with drone pilots, describes why these pilots experience such emotional distress. Combat pilots are not responsible for long-term intelligence collection, and are trained to leave the scene as soon as their missions are complete. On the other hand, a drone operator is responsible for collecting intelligence. This operator may observe the same person for months, becoming intimately familiar with the target’s daily life after seeing him with his friends and family. What’s more, the drone’s camera feed continues after a missile is launched. Drone pilots witness “the carnage close-up, in real time—the blood and severed body parts, the arrival of emergency responders, the anguish of friends and family…War by remote control turns out to be intimate and disturbing.”[23] One might also worry that justifying targeted killing with the logic of preemptive self-defense fails to address the combatant-noncombatant ambiguity previously discussed in reference to the military paradigm. For, if someone is killed before he commits a wrongful action, doesn’t that indicate that his killing could have only been status-based? I respond to this objection by reiterating that self-defense operates on the logic of action-based liability. While not immediately obvious, planning a deadly attack is a type of wrongful action severe enough to warrant liability to death, as it increases the likelihood of harm to a innocent people.[24] In this way, the assailant’s status is irrelevant; it is the nature of the threatening action that allows permissible retaliation. However, because of the preemptive nature of the response, there will always remain some uncertainty—indeed, the assailant could have had a change of heart and not followed through with the planned attack. Given this uncertainty, it is necessary to set the epistemic bar rather high when assessing the true likelihood that a suspected assailant will follow through with the threat. Indeed, extended surveillance should be used to ensure—to a degree of near certainty—that the targeted individual’s outward behaviors definitively imply intention to carry out an imminent attack. This would be possible with use of a drone, since it carries intelligence gathering capabilities. Ultimately, we should make quite certain that the assailant is truly preparing an attack for which killing them would be proportional to prevent the harm to innocents. In sum, my responses to these five objections follow a specific trend, emphasizing the need for stringent procedural constraints in use of drones, a high epistemic bar for identifying targets who pose a threat before proceeding to killing, and conducting the strikes with tremendous care for the welfare of civilians. I believe that if the policy for targeted killings was transparent, rigorously regulated, and strictly followed, the objections discussed above would be void. Conclusion In this essay, I have demonstrated that whenever targeted killing is permissible as an act of national self-defense, states have a duty to use drones to carry out the attack. In support of this argument, I have explained that the logic of self-defense is better applicable to targeted killings than either the logic of military conduct or of law enforcement. As the self-defense paradigm requires use of means which reduce risk to all parties involved, drones stand out as the obvious choice—precise, remote weapons which reduce the risk of harm to both soldiers and civilians. Finally, I responded to several objections to drone technology, ultimately concluding that strict and thoughtful procedures with regards to the technology’s use could allay critics’ overarching unease. Endnotes [1] Term of art meaning “just conduct during war.” [2] This is not to conflate the version of jihad that means “holy war” with its broader meaning: that is, a spiritual struggle within oneself against sin. [3] Jeff McMahan, “Targeted Killing: Murder, Combat or Law Enforcement?” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, eds. Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 142. [4] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,”142. [5] This is a long-standing military convention, explicitly defined in by the United States’ “Military Commissions Act of 2006,” to respond to the lack of its explicit codification under the Geneva Convention. [6] Under the Obama administration, this power was transferred to the Pentagon, thereby placing drone strikes under military jurisdiction. However, this policy was reversed in March 2017 by the Trump administration, placing drone strikes in the jurisdiction of civilians again. See Mark Bowden, “Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, and “Trump Gives CIA Authority to Conduct Drone Strikes,” Reuters. [7] Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 15, no. 6 (July 1972): 123-44. [8] Michael L. Gross, “Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (August 2006): 325. [9] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,”135; Claire Finkelstein, “Targeted Killing as Preemptive Action,” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, eds. Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 179. [10] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139. [11] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139 [12] Bradley Jay Strawser, “Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles,” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (December 2010): 346-7. [13] Michael W. Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever,” The Atlantic, August 21, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/drones-actuallythe-most-humane-form-of-warfare-ever/278746/. [14] Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever.” [15] Mark Bowden, “The Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, September 15, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-aboutdrones/309434/. [16] Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever.” [17] Bowden, “Killing Machines.” [18] Daniel L. Byman, “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice,” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-weapon-ofchoice. [19] Bowden, “Killing Machines,” The Atlantic. [20] Michael Walzer, “Terrorism and Just War,” Philosophia 34, no. 1 (2006): 9. [21] Michael Walzer, “Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare,” Dissent Magazine, January 11, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/targeted-killing-and-drone-warfare. [22] James Dao, “Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do,” The New York Times, February 22, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilotsfound-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html. [23] Bowden, “Killing Machines.” [24] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139. References Bowden, Mark. "The Killing Machines." The Atlantic, September 15, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/ . Byman, Daniel L. “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice.” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-weapon-of-choice/ . "Charter of the United Nations: Chapter VII." United Nations. Accessed November 20, 2018. http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii/ . Dao, James. "Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do." The New York Times, February 22, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilots-found-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html . Finkelstein, Claire. "Targeted Killing as Preemptive Action." In Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, 156-82. Oxford University Press, 2012. Gross, Michael L. “Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence?," Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (August 2006): 323-35. Lewis, Michael W. "Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever." The Atlantic, August 21, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/drones-actually-the-most-humane-form-of-warfare-ever/278746/ . McMahon, Jeff. “Targeted Killing: Murder, Combat or Law Enforcement?” In Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, 135-55. Oxford University Press, 2012. Nagel, Thomas. "War and Massacre." Philosophy and Public Affairs 15, no. 6 (July 1972): 123-44. Strawser, Bradley Jay. "Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles." Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (December 2010): 342-68. Singh, Kanishka. "Trump Gives CIA Authority to Conduct Drone Strikes." Reuters, March 13, 2017. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cia-drones-idUSKBN16K2SE . U.S. Congress, House. Military Commissions Act of 2006. HR - 6166, 109th Congr., 2nd sess. Introduced in Senate September 22, 2006. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/150084.pdf . Walzer, Michael. "Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare." Dissent Magazine, January 11, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/targeted-killing-and-drone-warfare . Walzer, Michael. "Terrorism and Just War." Philosophia 34, no. 1 (January 2006): 3-12.

Ezekiel Vergara Punishment: Human Nature, Order, and Power Ezekiel Vergara Legal punishment has become a pervasive phenomenon in society, affecting millions of individuals worldwide and encompassing police practices, prison systems, and medical professionals. However, the practice of punishment often overshadows its theoretical goals. This paper attempts to highlight the theoretical aims of punishment through a genealogy of punishment as it relates to human nature. The theory of punishment demonstrates the primacy of order as tied to human nature. In addition to order, punishment is shown to have secondary aims, such as moral desert, rehabilitation, and revenge. These primary and secondary goals of punishment are then compared to the modern practice of legal punishment. Unsurprisingly, punishment in theory differs greatly from punishment in praxis. Instead of fulfilling its theoretical aims, punishment functions as a locus of power that strips agency from the offenders. In an attempt to ameliorate this theoretical-practical difference, various solutions are provided to make practical punishment more congruent with the adopted theory. In the analysis and critique of punishment, authors from various fields are cited, ranging from seminal works by Michel Foucault to modern works by William Connolly and Didier Fassin. While the first instance of punishment remains unknown, punishment has permeated all aspects of life — in prisons, schools, and at homes. However, this paper will be limited only to “legal punishment,” or the activities of punishment that are conducted by states, courts, and police (1). To examine punishment, this paper will theoretically examine the institution and nature of punishment. The first section of the paper will seek to answer the question “what is punishment?” A brief genealogy of punishment and human nature will be presented. Proceeding from this analysis, the second portion of this pa- per will juxtapose the theoretical outline of punishment—as derived from human nature—with the actuality of modern punishment. Notably, it will be argued that the presence of asymmetric power relations distinguishes theoretical punishment from actual punishment. In response to the discrepancy between theoretical and practical punishment, a possible improvement to punishment will be proposed: al- lowing offenders to propose their own punishment. Finally, the paper will consider challenges to this proposal. In order to present a thorough and convincing analysis, each section of this paper will refer to a variety of authors, mainly political theorists and jurisprudential scholars, while also referencing some empirical data. Likewise, this paper will operate within the paradigm of the current debate on punishment and focus on punishment in the United States (2). I. Human Nature and Punishment Punishment is related to human nature; it seems impossible to divorce the two. Through a genealogy of punishment, it will be shown that these two concepts are heavily intertwined, with the human desire for order serving as the impetus for punishment. “Punishment,” then, refers to “an attempt to reestablish order through sanction on the offender, in accordance with human nature.” A few clarifying statements should be made before this relation is demonstrated via genealogy and analysis. First, the term “human nature” is an amorphous concept. Among theorists, there is debate on whether a unique “human nature” exists (3). Moreover, even if a human nature does exist, there is no consensus on the nature of this concept (4). Hence, this paper will present a thorough analysis of human nature that draws upon various authors. However, it is recognized that other conceptions of human nature may lead to the same conception of punishment. Second, the fact that punishment is related to human nature does not mean that human nature involves punishing. This paper does not preclude the hypothesis that human nature itself desires punishment, yet the link between punishment and human nature supported by this paper is more derivative, in that punishment arises from the human want of order (5). Presently, this paper will provide a genealogy of punishment that begins with human inequality (6). This inequality, which is natural to man, leads to conflict over similar wants. Namely, some individuals are better suited to achieve their wants, while others are less capable. When two or more individuals want a good that cannot be divided, the most capable is able to acquire the good. Oftentimes, this zero-sum game leads to conflict as the weaker party seeks retribution (7). In the face of this conflict, man desires order, which is the primary impetus for punishment. Because of this conflict, man seeks to establish a type of order, an order that can allow individuals to pursue their ends without the threat of violence (8). Ultimately, this order is established by a superior individual, family, tribe, or group that exerts control and establishes rules in a certain region. Originally, these rules are simply based on custom—or the norms of fair expectations in common-life. Due to their historical underpinnings, these customs are obeyed by the people (9). Over time, though, customs become binding in a certain area or jurisdiction (10). Customs, founded on fair expectations, seek to apply an objective, ordered standard of conduct to human behavior. However, because customs are not universally followed, a mechanism is needed to maintain order and ensure adherence to these expectations. Primarily, to increase the level of norm adherence, sanctions serve to increase the costs of deviance. Eventually, with the creation of the state and morality, punishment began to be exercised by centralized legitimate authorities that monopolize violence (11). Important to the monopolization of violence is the codification of norms or general maxims, allowing the state to determine when punishments, such as monetary and physical punishments, should be applied. For instance, in the early United States, many crimes were accompanied by a fine and those convicted suffered harms from forced labor to capital punishment. Thus, a legal system came into existence. As punishment evolves over time with the expansion of the state, the economy also plays an important role related to order-based punishment. Namely, monetary payment can be used as a sanction on offenders, as a way to reestablish order (12). The creditor-debtor relationship serves as the basis for punishment in the Nietzschean account (13). The Nietzschean account highlights the relationality and inequalities of punishment. Namely, the asymmetry of Nietzsche’s power relations requires two or more parties, illustrating that power is something relational among individuals (14). As such, the penal relationship presents a distinct power dynamic, derived from the creditor-debtor relationship. Plainly, the creditor exercises an asymmetrical amount of power as he has something that the debtor needs or wants. On the other hand, the debtor has little power to resist, especially if he is in need of the creditor’s good. An asymmetry, then, exists between the creditor and debtor. Such inequality is mirrored in the punisher-punished relationship where the former exercises power over the latter, given that a good must be compensated. Given the desire for order—seen through the state and the economy—three points on human nature and punishment should be addressed here. First, the emergence of the state may simply be a “pleasure, delighted in the promised blood,” a mechanism that legitimizes infliction of suffering (15). Thus, instead of producing order, the state may simply serve as a means of exacting revenge on other individuals through a legitimized relationship. For example, police violence is legitimized and allowed to persist by the law (16). Second, the desire for punishment appears as a type of desire satisfaction, which signals that humans desire order. Simply, there is pleasure in order and reestablishing order through suffering. Rather than repaying money in the creditor-debtor relationship, the loan is replaced by suffering. Third, there seems to be a degree of rationality in punishment. For example, adults are sanctioned more severely than children for criminal offenses. Thus, it seems that punishment operates on a scale of rationality, as it is supposed that children have not completely developed such faculties, or what is generally accepted amongst individuals, whereas adults do (17). In short, then, punishment is derived from the desire for order, due to inequality and competing wants. Punishment reestablishes order when a standard—originally custom, presently law—is broken. Through a genealogy of punishment, certain aspects of human nature become readily disclosed. As such, punishment appears multifaceted, but likewise contained within a certain paradigm, that of history and custom. Thence, “punishment” appears to be “an attempt to reestablish order through a sanction on an offender, in accordance with human nature.” II. How to Punish This section of the paper will discuss a theory of how punishment should be practiced, as derived from human nature. Human nature appears to want order through punishment or sanction, but punishment appears to have secondary aims. Nietzsche identifies a list of secondary aims, besides the primary aim of order. For example, punishment also seeks revenge, deterrence, and reformation (18). This pa- per will now explicate the primary and secondary aims of punishment and analyze their current practice. In this way, it will be illustrated how punishment based on human nature would be conducted and how current practices deviate from these theoretical ideals. Order—the primary goal of punishment—is crucial to the practice of punishment. The basis of order is fair expectations, as has already been discussed. The notion of order, when tied to fair expectations, illustrates two aspects about how to punish. First, punishment requires a relationship of two or more individuals, most clearly seen with Nietzsche’s creditor-debtor example (19). A relationship between two individuals allows for a good to be extracted and a sanction to be applied, which releases the offender from his duty or debt. Thus, punishment must establish a relationship between individuals, thereby allowing order and therefore human nature to exist among them. Overall, this phenomenon is both practiced and disregarded in modern punishment. The modern offender engages in various relationships—with the warden, with the judge, with the prison-worker, with the doctor, with the criminologist— that allow for a good to be extracted and a duty absolved (20). However, this is not always the case. Solitary confinement is readily practiced in the modern penal system, undermining punishment’s goal of reestablishing order between individuals. Namely, by isolating an offender, it is impossible for the offender to form and maintain a given relationship, thereby disregarding a fundamental necessity of order (21). Moreover, even if it is the case that solitary confinement is not permanent, the relationships in question are disrupted (22). This not only limits the goods that can be extracted from the offender, but also creates an unequal power dynamic that further forestalls the absolution of the offender’s duty. That is, by confining the offender, he is rendered more unable to adequately engage in the relationships required by order-based punishment. Moreover, this power asymmetry strips the offender of his agency, which is of value, and contributes to disorder. Ultimately, to improve punishment, such an unequal power dynamic must be remedied. Second, in regard to order, is the notion of fair expectation. Fair expectations highlight the proportionality of a claim, as illustrated in the creditor-debtor relationship. The debtor and the creditor have an agreement on how much money should be returned to the creditor. While there exists an asymmetrical power dynamic among the creditor and the debtor, the agreement itself is fair (23). Thus, punishment requires a level of proportionality, due to the fairness of the original agreement. The proportionality of a sanction establishes a reasonable duty that is imposed on the offender, as a means to reestablish order. However, fairness as it relates to order is rarely practiced. Punishment in the United States is far from proportional, affecting minority and low-income individuals at a much higher level. These disparate impacts violate the original agreement of fairness and call into question the validity of the original agreement. Similarly, the modern penal system often places a burden on individuals, aside from the actual punishment. The offender often faces the prospect of losing his job, his family, and his friends (24). Hence, disproportionality is endemic to modern punishment. Aside from order, punishment also aims to exact revenge, deterrence, and reformation. In theory, these secondary aims support the primary goal of order. However, when improperly executed, these secondary goals actually subvert the primary end of order. Through an analysis of all three secondary aims, it will become clear that there are grand discrepancies between the theory and practice regarding punishment. The idea of revenge being an aim of punishment is grounded in Nietzsche’s work, namely the “slave morality” and his creditor-debtor relationship (25). Unable to alter the past, a wronged individual seeks to will the present and the future. To do so, punishment deprives the offender of future possibilities. Simply then, the offender must repay for his actions in sufferings that occur in and possibly over time (26). Revenge, then, desires that the offender suffers, requiring a unique relation- ship between a victim and an offender. However, in practice, revenge deviates from its theoretical framework. First, it is forbidden by modern law; second, it is expressive (27). As for the former, revenge is viewed negatively, seen by many as a type of desire to be suppressed. Only the law can punish, not private individuals. Nevertheless, the law appears to be a façade for this vengeful desire, concealing this vengefulness in its legitimacy (28). Although not always physical retribution, the law legitimizes the unsupervised and unwarranted violence of the few, seen in modern police practices (29). Moreover, punishment as revenge is expressive. Mainly a part of the retributivist framework, revenge is an expressive punishment that allows for the symbolic expression of disapprobation (30). Punishment creates a new social stratum of the delinquent (31). This social stratum unites society by providing a scapegoat that can be examined, questioned, and blamed. Thus, revenge is cathartic, creating a unified relationship between members of society against the delinquent population, as seen in Connolly’s discussion (32). Therefore, practical punishment should inflict warranted suffering on an offender and create an offender-victim relationship. However, in practice, revenge inflicts unwarranted violence that scapegoats the offender to unite large groups, perverting the aforementioned relationship. For instance, unwarranted violence against Black Americans, under the guise of punishment, has long served to unite whites around ethno-national identity. Yet, such unity under the guise of punishment is actually counterintuitive, given that through these means, the primary goal of order is subverted. Indeed, this prevents the creation of a legitimate, properly-ordered system. Deterrence is another aim of punishment, secondary to that of order. The idea of deterring crime suggests that individuals wish to live in an orderly society and have the ability to project into the future. Put simply, individuals can posit future relationships or possibilities where crime affects them. Thus, punishment deters other possible offenders from committing similar crimes in the future. However, deterrence supposes two connected ideas. The first is that individuals act rationally; secondly, it supposes that punishment is the appropriate means to deter crime. Deterrence, in theory, supposes the rationality of possible offenders and their ability to make cost-benefit analyses. The thought goes that by increasing the punishment for a given offense, individuals will be less willing to commit the crime as the benefit of committing an offense is overshadowed by the punishment for that offense. Notwithstanding this consideration, deterrence is very different on a practical level. Didier Fassin notes that the punishment used to deter crime is often aimed at humiliation and shaming, aimed at emotion, instead of rationality and cost-benefit analyses (33). Therefore, the theory behind deterrence, which is based on the conception of rationality among individuals, is overshadowed by irrational practice that subverts the primary goal of order. Deterrence, in practice, supposes not the rationality and dignity of humans, but rather exploits the social relations of individuals. Through such exploitation, the creation of a proper order is forestalled. This may partly answer why punishment aimed at deterrence fails, failing to support the primary goal of order (34). Finally, punishment has the secondary aim of rehabilitation. The idea of re- habilitation is important to maintaining the primary goal of order through punishment. In theory, rehabilitation has two key aspects: temporality and relational existence. Temporality is crucial to human nature and is tied to the goal of rehabilitating an offender. The idea of rehabilitation supposes that an offender remains the same responsible agent over time and likewise that the offender can change and adopt the laws and norms of a society (35). By attempting to reform an offender, the offender is forced to face the past and reflect upon the offense that was committed. During such a reflection, part of human nature is unconcealed, in the sense that the individual can gain understanding about himself (36). With this reflection, the offender is prompted to project into the future, where he will not commit the offense, drawing off the present insight, which is provided by the reflection on the past. As a result, the offender recognizes his own temporality, his possibility aside from crime and the temporality of the penal system. Relationality is also tied to rehabilitation. The notion of rehabilitation requires that an individual is aided by another individual. Usually, this takes the form of an offender and an authority figure, such as a therapist, a teacher, or a doctor. Although the offender-authority relationship is originally based on an asymmetry of power, the rehabilitation process diminishes the asymmetrical power dynamic as the offender reforms. Theoretically, over time, punishment serves to help the offender regain his standing in society, having “paid his debt to society.” Due to this symmetrical relationship of rehabilitation, the offender can understand his human nature and his past, knowing that the future will be based on relationships with other individuals in a given society. In short, rehabilitation awakens an of- fender to his human nature and diminishes the asymmetry between offender and non-offender. However, modern punishment falls short of rehabilitating offenders. Instead of engaging offenders with their temporal and relational being, punishment urges recidivism (37). Those who are punished by the modern system are disempowered and hardened in their ways. Rather than operating on the notion of individual responsibility, offenders are maligned; offenders are made out to be “[monsters]” beyond rehabilitation (38). Likewise, instead of turning offenders to the future and their possibility, the penal system focuses on the past and the asymmetrical power relations created by the past. This is best seen in Fassin’s ethnographic work, as prisoners are punished simply due to their past (39). For example, without the ability to secure adequate jobs or housing, many offenders turn back to crime, leading to high lev- els of recidivism. By limiting the opportunities available to former offenders, and contributing to recidivism, order-based punishment is undermined. Rather than a properly ordered system, offenders are thrust towards further crime and disorder. Offenders are neither rehabilitated nor empowered; offenders are trapped in the past, which forestalls their ability to recognize and to contribute to order. Punishment, namely how to punish, seems complex but grounded in human nature. Focusing on order, the ideas of relationality and fairness are clearly espoused. In regard to the other aims of punishment, the unique ideas of temporality, suffering, and rationality are clearly presented. However, the goals of penal theory are far from the actuality of penal praxis. Instead, the modern penal system perpetuates asymmetric relationships that alienate offenders and highlights the desire to faire le mal pour le plaisir de le faire (40). In such practice, human nature is blatantly disregarded, necessitating reform in punishment. III. Improving Punishment Punishment, as has been discussed, is based on a relationship and can thereby be described as just or unjust. As a concept, justice entails what should be given or done to others. Here, justice has a multiplicity of characteristics, yet one characteristic seems crucial to justice and is tied to human nature: relationality. Notably, justice defines the obligations and rights between individuals (41). Since relationality is an aspect of justice—which is paramount to reducing the discrepancy between theory and practice—reformation regarding relationships appears crucial to im- proving punishment. Practical punishment, as based on a power asymmetry, appears unjust. This power asymmetry is unjust because it strips the offender of his agency, which is of value. Therefore, the task of justice, regarding practical punishment, is reducing the power asymmetry between the offender and others. By reducing this asymmetry, offenders will better understand their nature, creating a proper order that is respective of the offender’s agency. Moreover, a more symmetric power dynamic would intuitively reduce the problems created by practical implementations of revenge, deterrence, and rehabilitation. That is, by having a more symmetric power relationship, not only will offenders be more capable to oppose these practical injustices, but punishers will be less likely to commit such injustices. To be more just, the penal systems must reduce the asymmetry of power relations by highlighting the agency of the offender. Instead of passively going through the penal system, the offender must exercise his unique human agency. The root of this aforementioned asymmetry arose from the penal process. Both Connolly and Fassin underscore the asymmetry of the modern penal system in their work. In regard to the former, the rhetoric surrounding the offender dehumanizes him, making the offender equivalent to an animal, one that needs to be tamed (42). In regard to the latter, the individuals are at the mercy of the penal system, unable to exercise their human capacities (43). This is further seen in the strict penal regiments of prisons and the rigid punishments of statutes. To reduce this asymmetry, I argue that offenders should be allowed to propose their punishment for the crimes in cases where a judge or jury has found the offender guilty. To illustrate this proposal, I draw from Plato’s and Xenophon’s renditions of the ancient Athenian penal system during the trial of Socrates (44). Unlike the modern penal system, where the offender plays a passive role, in the trial of Socrates, Socrates is prompted to give his own defense and cross-examine witnesses. Moreover, when Socrates’ is found guilty, he is required to propose a punishment that would serve as recompense for the offense in question. The Athenian jury, in Socrates’ case, then votes to choose between the offender’s proposed punishment and that proposed by the prosecution. By doing so, Socrates is able to exercise his agency, despite the fact that he is sentenced to drink the hemlock. In the modern penal system, the offender is able to defend himself if he wishes, but often defers to an attorney. Most times, the offender defers because he does not have a strong, functional knowledge on the intricacies of the law. Hence, a lawyer—an expert on the law—is brought in to compensate for the offender’s lack of legal knowledge. This process strips the offender of his agency to directly affect the legal proceedings and thereby creates an asymmetric power relationship between the offender and others. I propose that offenders should be allowed to propose their punishment for crimes in cases where a judge or jury has found the offender guilty. To ensure that all offenders can propose their punishments, all citizens should be required to take some course on the law, so that offenders can have more agency during the trial’s proceedings and in sentencing. In the wise words of Plato, “if law is the master [...] then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state” (45). By allowing the individual to present a possible punishment, the offender is forced to assume responsibility for his actions. Here, the offender exercises his agency and presents himself as a responsible agent before the court. Hence, the offender will create a more symmetric power relationship with others, including those of authority in the penal system. The result of this symmetric relationship will be a more just penal system, with individuals capable of exercising their unique human capacities. A few brief words should be said on this suggestion. First, the prosecution would also propose a penalty, like in the Athenian system. Penalty proposals would allow for the judge or jury to decide the punishment of a case, while also maintaining the symmetry of the offender-authority relationship (46). Similarly, this method does not sacrifice any of the goals of punishment as it allows order and punishment’s secondary goals to be pursued. Finally, the idea of permitting the offender to have a choice in his punishment is not completely unsupported. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord argues that individuals should choose amongst various punishment plans to repay for an offense (47). Such a penal structure allows individuals to take responsibility and reimburses society with a proportional penalty. However, one may take issue with this potential solution on the grounds that such a solution has two counterintuitive implications: sentencing and asymmetric power relationships (48). As for the former, one might think that offenders will always choose the minimal possible punishment for their crime. Or even worse, drawing from the trial of Socrates, the offender may go as far as to argue that he should be rewarded, not punished. As for the latter, one might contend that an asymmetric power relationship still maintains within this proposal. Namely, it seems to be the case that the judge or jury in question is still more powerful than the offender because the former have the final say on the punishment. To salvage this proposal, it is necessary to assuage these concerns about sentencing and asymmetric power relationships. To each concern, there are two considerations that ought to be considered. With the concern of sentencing, two factors are worth considering. First, the proposal is pragmatically worthwhile because it leaves open the possibility that one chooses a punishment that is unlike a minimum sentence and is actually more beneficial. Here, instead of spending time in prison, an offender may choose to engage in public work programs. The possibility of a punishment that differs from the minimum sentence, but is actually beneficial, is an upshot of this view. Second, extreme sentencing is rejected. For example, take the case where a serial killer proposes the punishment of a $20 fine. In this case, it is reasonable to suppose that either (1) the prosecutor in the given case would propose a much more reasonable punishment for the crime or (2) that the judge and jury would consider the reasonableness of the proposal in question when making their determination (49). As a result, extreme sentencing would rarely occur. Rather, a domain of reasonable alternatives to punishment would become socially acceptable, perhaps including minimum jail time and participation in public work projects. Therefore, regarding sentencing, there are pragmatic benefits and reasonable constraints that bolster this proposal against challenges. A more concerning objection presses on the power dynamics of sentencing, given that the judge or the jury still hold a degree of power over the offender. Here, two considerations are important. First, while it is the case that the judge or jury exercises power over the offender, the degree of asymmetry in the relationship is noteworthy. Notably, according to the proposal herein defended, judges and juries exercise less power over the offender than they currently do. Although the proposal does not completely rid itself of this asymmetry, the proposal should pragmatically be adopted, given its upshot of reducing the current asymmetry. Second, in an ideal world, judges and juries would be benevolent and strive to engage in symmetric relationships. However, in practice, there is a concern that judges and juries would overly exercise this asymmetric power. With this in mind, it is questionable whether the concern over asymmetry solely hinges on the proposal herein defended. Rather, it seems that the quality of judges and juries is important. Thus, it may not be the case that the asymmetric power dynamic completely hinges on the account of punishment that has been offered; rather, in addition to this proposal, it seems that work should be done to reform judgeships and juries, so as to further eliminate the asymmetric power relation. Aside from these concerns regarding details of this proposal, one could argue that the solutions offered to ameliorate punishment are impractical in regard to the modern penal society. Such a claim can be based on concerns with the current structure of the penal system or on larger societal concerns. In regard to the former, it could be argued the modern penal system is incapable of adjusting to the recommended changes. For example, an institution—most likely schools—would be required to teach courses on the law, requiring an overhaul of the current curriculum. Similarly, preparing authorities to engage in discourse with offenders may require training and some type of incentivization. However, both of these challenges are easily refuted. Namely, these solutions could be gradually incorporated into the penal system over time, thereby allowing for individual and institutional adjustment. Rather than implementing a radical change, change over time would ease the economic burden incurred by improving the penal system and also allow for individuals to change their biases towards offenders. Moreover, schools alter their curriculum as they incorporate new requirements, such as physical education. Hence, instituting a minimum requirement for knowledge of the law appears feasible. A greater practical concern is the need for societal change as the penal system reforms. It would seem paradoxical if the penal system reduced the asymmetry of the offender-authority power relationship, but society still stigmatized offenders. The ongoing stigmatization takes on various forms: increased policing, reduced housing opportunities, or reduced employment opportunities (50). While this is indeed a legitimate concern, it misunderstands the aims of this paper. I believe that these changes are without a doubt necessary when addressing the issue of punishment, however, this paper only seeks to examine the legal penal system. These societal concerns—while important to improving punishment—appears outside the bounds of this paper. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that the entirety of punishment, beyond the legal penal system, must be examined to create a more just society and to ensure that there is no asymmetry between the offender and society after the former has repaid for his offense. IV. Conclusion According to Michel Foucault, “western man has become a confessing animal” (51). Perhaps, however, it is better said that man has become a “punishing animal.” While this paper has only addressed legal punishment—that conducted by police, judges, and prisons—punishment is a societal phenomenon. From schools, to homes, to prisons, punishment is everywhere in society. The genealogy of legal punishment that was presented at the beginning of this paper illustrates that punishment is a fundamental derivation of man’s nature. While punishment may not be natural to man, it is a result of his nature. As such, a summary on the conclusions of this paper will help delineate the human nature that influences penal practice. The ideal of punishment was shown to have both primary and secondary goals. The most important of these goals is order, yet punishment aimed at order requires relationality. The nature of relationships, in the ideal penal theory, were shown to be fair and symmetric. However, when juxtaposed to the realities of modern punishment, it became evident that practical punishment was heavily based on the creation of asymmetrical relationships between the offender and penal authorities, thereby devaluing the human nature of the offender. A combination of increased agency and increased discourse was proposed as a means to reduce this inherent asymmetry. By empowering the offender, the penal system appears to become more just. These solutions seem promising and feasible, withstanding refutations that challenge the accounts provided. Although this paper has addressed punishment, some changes are needed beyond punishment, regarding the social and economic burden that punishment places on the offender and those associated with the offender. Moreover, work must be done to examine the effects of this paper’s paradigm on innocent individuals that have been convicted of an offense. However, legal punishment has been addressed in these pages. This is only one step towards this more just society. Such reforms are possible, among intellectuals and society-at-large: the ideal is not out of sight. Endnotes 1 The list of those involved in “legal punishment” that is provided above is non-extensive. From here on, “punishment” will refer to “legal punishment,” unless otherwise specified. 2 The United States is used as the case study of this paper for two reasons: the prevalence of punishment in the United States and the author’s familiarity with the American punishment system. 3 See the post-modern and post-structural schools of thought. For the former, see Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra . For the latter, see Gilles Deluze and Félix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia . 4 See the difference between Thomas Aquinas and Friedrich Nietzsche. For the former, see Aquinas’ On Law, Morality, and Politics . For the latter, see Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra . 5 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 41. 6 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1969), 123; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Discourse and Other Early Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 131. 7 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 75. 8 Augustine, City of God (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1958), 452-453. 9 Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 10 Carter, James, Law, Its Origin, Growth and Function (London: Forgotten Books, 2018), lectures 1-5. 11 The idea of “monopolization of the means of violence” comes from sociologist Max Weber. 12 Fassin, Didier, The Will to Punish (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 47-51. 13 Nietzsche, Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality , 40. 14 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 93-4. 15 Rabinow, Paul, Truth and Power: The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 85. 16 Fassin, Didier et al., At the Heart of the State: The Moral World of Institutions (London: Pluto Press, 2015). 17 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 322-323. 18 Nietzsche, Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality , 53-54. 19 Ibid, 40. 20 Foucault, Discipline and Punish , 256. 21 Fassin, The Will to Punish , 76-77, 83. 22 I thank Sotonye George for the point. 23 The need or want of the debtor creates this asymmetry. The asymmetry can also be produced due to natural inequality or dire circumstances. However, within this dynamic, the agreement is fair as both parties reasonably agree to it within the asymmetric relationship. 24 Feeley, Malcolm, The Process is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1979), xv; Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 268. 25 Nietzsche, Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality , 20, 40. 26 Foucault, Discipline and Punish , 232. 27 Revenge on the individual level is prohibited, but modern law does not preclude the idea of institutional vengeance. 28 Rabinow, Truth and Power , 85. 29 Fassin et al., At the Heart of the State . 30 Fassin, The Will to Punish , 69. 31 Foucault, Discipline and Punish , 170-184, 266-268. 32 Ibid, 53. 33 Fassin, The Will to Punish , 72-74. While it may be possible that these emotional pathways have or include some rational content, appealing to emotions deviates from the original appeal to strict rationality associated with deterrence. 34 Foucault, Discipline and Punish , 261. 35 Fuller, Lon L., The Morality of Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 162. Modern legal systems seem to suppose human responsibility in punishment. This seems to be a key tenet of rehabilitation. 36 Heidegger, Martin, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Garland, 1977), 35. 37 Foucault, Discipline and Punish , 265. 38 Connolly, William E., The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1995), 45. 39 Fassin, The Will to Punish , 75-77. 40 Nietzsche, Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality , 41. 41 See Scanlon, Thomas M., What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1998); Rawls, John, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 5-6; Miller, David, “Justice” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017). 42 Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization , 45. 43 Fassin, The Will to Punish , 72-77. 44 See Plato, Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), and Xenophon, Xenophon: Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, Symposium, Apology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). One might argue that the trial of Socrates is the pinnacle of injustice. Yet, not only is such a position disputed, but my proposal solely attempts to schematically draw upon this example. I thank Tianyu Zhou for pushing me on this point. 45 Plato, Plato: Complete Works , 1402. 46 By allowing the judge or jury to decide between the punishments proposed by the prosecution and defense, the convicted offender is still punished if he proposes a reward as his punishment, as was the case in the trial of Socrates. 47 Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, “Criminal Justice and Legal Reparations as an Alternative to Punishment,” Philosophical Issues no. 11 (2001), 505-506, 509. 48 I thank Morgan Cutts for pressing me to address this objection. 49 Note that this is an inclusive disjunction. 50 This list is not extensive but attempts to highlight some of the scenarios that affect offenders due to their offender-status. 51 Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (London: Penguin, 1990), 59. References Aquinas, Thomas. 2002. On Law, Morality, and Politics. Kindle Edition. Edited by William P. Baumgarth and Richard J. Regan. Translated by Richard J. Regan. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition . 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1968. Between Past and Future . New York, NY: The Viking Press. Aristotle. 2014. The Complete Aristotle . Edited by Jonathan Barnes. Bollingen Series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. http://www.feedbooks. com/book/4960/the-complete-aristotle. Augustine. 1958. City of God . New York, NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. Carter, James. 2018. Law, Its Origin, Growth and Function: Being a Course of Lectures Prepared for Delivery Before the Law School of Harvard University . London, UK: Forgotten Books. Connolly, William E. 1995. The Ethos of Pluralization . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1983. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia . Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Durkheim, Emile. 1964. The Division of Labor in Society . Translated by W.D. Halls. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Fassin, Didier. 2018. The Will to Punish . Edited by Christopher Kurz. The Berkeley Tanner Lectures. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190888589.001.0001/oso- 9780190888589 Fassin, Didier, Yasmine Bouagga, Isabelle Coutant, Jean-Sébastien Eideliman, Fabrice Fernandez, Nicolas Fischer, Carolina Kobelinsky, Chowra Ma- karemi, Sarah Mazouz, and Sébastien Roux. 2015. At the Heart of the State: The Moral World of Institutions . Translated by Patrick Brown and Didier Fassin. Anthropology, Culture and Society. London, UK: Pluto Press. http://library1.nida.ac.th/termpaper6/sd/2554/19755.pdf. Feeley, Malcolm. 1979. The Process Is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court . Russell Sage Foundation. Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison . Translated by Alan Sheridan. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction . Translated by R. Hurley. London, UK: Penguin Books. Foucault, Michel. 1977. “Intellectuals and Power.” In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews . Edited by Donald Bouchard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fuller, Lon L. 1964. The Morality of Law . 1st ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays . Translated by William Lovitt. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc. Hobbes, Thomas. 1994. Leviathan . Edited by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Locke, John. 1960. Two Treatises of Government . 1st ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Miller, David. 2017. “‘Justice.’” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition) . Moore, Michael. 1987. “The Moral Worth of Retribution.” In Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology . Edited by Ferdinand Shoeman. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1969. Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Edited and translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York, NY: Penguin Books. ———. 2007. Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality . Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson. Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Plato. 1997. Plato: Complete Works . Edited by John M. Cooper. Associate editor D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Rabinow, Paul (Ed.). 1984. Truth and Power: The Foucault Reader . Pantheon Books . Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism . 1st ed. The John Dewey Essays in Philosophy. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ———. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement . Edited by Erin Kelly. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1997. The Discourse and Other Early Political Writings . Cam- bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey. 2001. “Criminal Justice and Legal Reparations as an Alternative to Punishment.” Philosophical Issues , no. 11: 502–29. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/3050612%0A. Scanlon, Thomas M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other . 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1984. “Foucault on Freedom and Truth.” Political Theory , no. 12(2): 152–83. http://www.jstor.org/stable/191359. Xenophon. 2013. Xenophon: Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, Symposium, Apology . Edited by Jeffrey Henderson. Translated by E. C. Marchant and O. J. Todd. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Previous Next

Racial Capitalism Racial Capitalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Challenging the Fallacy of Black Entitlement under Service Delivery Protests. Olerato Mogomotsi University of Cape Town Author Miles Campbell Allie Dolido Sydney Munro Editors Spring 2018 This essay focuses on racial capitalism in post apartheid South Africa, with reference to service delivery protests. I. Introduction There is a domineering narrative within South African white liberal spaces that black people who have failed to escape the shackling cycle of poverty are lazy, incompetent, and sit on their verandas the whole day waiting for a job to fall in their hands (Biko, 2017). This narrative is conventionally understood as ‘black entitlement.’ White liberals erroneously believe that black poor people, who are in fact dispossessed and agentless, do not want to seize the opportunities South Africa has. With reference to the trend and nature of South African service delivery protests in post-Apartheid South Africa, I argue that South Africa has been and still is plagued by systemic racial capitalism that has persisted through South Africa’s transition into democracy. I argue that racial capitalism has manifested through the adoption of a neo-liberal economy, initiated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission compromise. Consequently, the pre- and post-apartheid impact of a racially segregated and unilaterally white-benefiting capitalist economy is a rash on the black mind which has not seen adequate redress. I will first show how Marxist and Liberal authors have attempted to merge the concepts of race and capitalism. I will then highlight the Marxist and Liberal shortcomings in validating racial capitalism as a comprehensible and historically visible concept. I will then call for a holistic re-conceptualization of racial capitalism that makes up for the Marxist and Liberal shortcomings. This new conceptualization will inform the rest of my argument around the fallacy of black entitlement in South Africa. I will show that even a black majoritarian government has not been enough to correct the historic economic disadvantage that presently plagues the black poor majority. II. Conceptualising Racial Capitalism In this paper, I will make use of the micro and macro levels of political analysis to understand South Africa’s racial capitalism. This analysis will observe the condition of black South African lives over time in order to explain the persistence of racial capitalism from Apartheid until today. Additionally, by addressing inconsistencies in the Marxist and Liberal conceptions of race and capitalism, I will argue that the effects of colonialism and South African oppression politics have integrated racial capitalism into South African society. Liberal scholarship on racial capitalism in the Apartheid era focuses disproportionately on the socio-legal systematic framework of Apartheid to explain the relationship between race and capitalism. This literature almost regards race in South Africa as inherently anti-capitalistic and claims capitalism was incompatible with Apartheid, primarily because “free-market” capitalism requires equality of opportunity and agency (Schneider, 2003). In truth, liberal scholarship on the intersection of capitalism and racism in South Africa is incomplete because it fails to fully account for institutionalized racism, dispossession and the displacement of black people in South Africa. Liberal scholarship has completely ignored provisions made for white monopolized capitalism, so much so that an Apartheid-like economy could persevere constructively for 46 years. The writing of Merle Lipton exemplifies the liberal perception of an intersection between race and capitalism under the Apartheid regime which I critique. Lipton took no issue in disapproving of Apartheid on a moral basis. He argues that the legalized systematic exclusion of black people in South Africa was unwarranted and unsustainable (Hirsch, 1987). Lipton argued that South Africa, if it were to revive any sign of liberties or democracy and have a sustainable capitalist economy, needed to end Apartheid and replace it with multi-racialism (Hirsch, 1987). While admitting that the South African economy relied on the coerced, cheap labor of black people, it seems surprising and somewhat contradictory that Lipton also states that capitalism never required or supported Apartheid (Hirsch, 1987). This point by Lipton, that capitalism never required Apartheid, is incomplete because it fails to recognize the role that racism and white supremacy has had in the distribution of socio-economic resources, as well as with regard to the historical discrepancies of intergenerational endowments for Blacks relative to Whites. Lipton’s form of liberalism does not account for disproportionate endowments of historical value, such as education, property, wealth and capital that has enabled the legalization of a systematic exclusion and deskilling of black people. In particular, Liberal writing about South Africa tends to minimize the impact of the Bantustans. Liberal writers downplay the role of black people’s economic contribution (Murray, 1987). It is undeniable, as Colin Murray says, that the Bantustans excluded 'blacks from rights of access to jobs and housing in white South Africa;' thereby making blacks economic foreigners in their own country (Murray, 1987). There is a strong indication that due to a lack of education and skills, black migrant cheap labor was the backbone of the agricultural and mining sectors of the South African economy. This produced a “whites as owners” and “blacks as laborers” framework of traditional capitalism being practiced in South Africa between the 1960s and 1970s (Schneider, 2003). Thus, it is clear that we cannot discount the impact of systematic exclusion from economic activity in the form of adequate welfare provision, labor mobility and deskilling, which incites consistent wealth creation disproportionately along racial lines. It is the discounting of the abovementioned systematic exclusion that accounts for the incompleteness of the liberal attempt to conceptualize racial capitalism. Alternatively, Marxist scholarship places disproportionate emphasis on capitalism’s need for class creation and reproduction, thus ignoring the role of racial subjugation (SACP, 1987). In historicizing class creation through racial lines, Marxist conceptions completely sidelined the historical impact, nature, and intent of settler colonialism in changing the psychology of South African blackness. While I admit that cheap black labor is a manifestation of racial capitalism, racial capitalism cannot be removed from the narrative of settler colonialism in South Africa. The experience of continual dispossession of blacks from their social and economic endowments is informed by the institutionalization of settler colonialism as bedrock of racial capitalism. Marxist conceptions of racial capitalism in South Africa focused primarily on the issue of Black cheap labor. The economy of South Africa was sustained by black unskilled workers, who were forced to migrate from the Bantustans to South African economic hubs such as Johannesburg to find work (SACP, 1987). The views of neo-Marxist writers, such as Nancy Leong, provide a revisionist yet historically deficient view of racial capitalism, stating that racial capitalism is the “process of deriving social or economic value from the racial identity of another person” (Leong 2013). Leong comments on how liberalism has made blackness a desirable entity, which is to be captured, possessed and used (Leong 2013). While this type of Marxist conception focuses on the importance of race relations in driving capitalism, it still lacks an adequate explanation of why Black people are disadvantaged in a capitalist system. It is arguable that more can be done in the literature to hone in on the extent to which settler colonialism was the fundamental determinant the native’s structural economic exploitation. This may further inform how the subjugation of natives in South Africa became a structurally inherited and sustained method of fostering a type of capitalism which is drawn along racial lines. The South African Communist Party’s “Colonialism of a Special Type Document” fittingly substantiates my argument about this point, as it too claims that South Africa’s capitalism maintained the norm of colonial dominance, where the colonial ruling class (White people) and the oppressed black majority live in one country (SACP, 1987). The structural reinforcement of capitalism by the white owning class has not changed with the changed South African Political climate, which should be seen as a factor solidifying racial capitalism in post-Apartheid South Africa. While racial capitalism occurred in the Apartheid system, it is not reliant on that particular regime. Rather, we must understand that racial capitalism exists today because of the intersection of settler colonialism intent, historical dispossession and the deskilling of black people. Thus, by merging Liberal and Marxists concepts of race and capitalism, I conclude that racial capitalism is best defined as follows: Racial capitalism is a malleable term that defines the conditions under which racial identities are used to reinforce coercive power relations, which are seen in the racialization of socio-economic resources. It is informed by the domination of a particular racial group in order to extract economic gain for the benefit of the dominant class (Leong, 2013). Racial capitalism at its core makes use of racial prejudice as an instrument of maintaining unequal participation in the market resource allocation process by reinforcing systematic dispossession and deskilling of the oppressed race under a typically liberal economy ideological set. III. Racial Capitalism in the New South Africa This above-mentioned definition of racial capitalism recognizes that the birth and persistence of the capitalist economy in South Africa is inseparable from the unjust system of domination encapsulated by settler colonialism and the maintenance of black dispossession. This definition indicates that the black body is considered valuable so long as it can provide labor and be remunerated with subsistence wages. This leads to its commodification. I anticipate that liberal critics of my working definition might find that this conception of racial capitalism is incompatible with the current condition of South Africa post-1994, a country that adopted what is argued as the best constitution in the world, and maintains a predominantly black-ruled democratic state. However, I counter the supposed positive effects attributed to the process of democratization and liberal constitutionalism, by arguing that there was very little redress, which has resulted in the transferal of racial capitalism into the democratic state, even after 1994. I argue this because the South African government, at a pivotal time of regime change, chose to focus on a creating a globalized neoliberal economy rather than leveling the intergenerational effects of distorted socio-economic endowments along racial lines. To assert this argument, I will refer particularly to the period of transition and ten years post-transition into democracy. Additionally, I will address the way in which uncertainty and neoliberal compromises informed economic policy in the period of democratic transition in South Africa. There is a vivid indication of how compromise politics, which played out through the African National Congress (ANC) primary and National Party negotiating agents, is coupled with the consolidation of neo-liberalism and the protection of racial capitalism in South Africa. The ANC initially had hoped to enact radical economic transformation in South Africa. This is evident from the drafting of the Freedom Charter by the ANC and its allies in 1955 to the introduction of the radical “Reconstruction and Development Programme” policy in 1996. In particular, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) was an ANC document that stated the intent to use the resources of the country to explicitly eradicate Apartheid, moving towards building a non-racialized society (RDP, 1994). The RDP Policy document recognized the effects of “repressive labor policies” under colonialist domination (RDP, 1994). Furthermore, the document also admitted that the economy was built through systemic racial division, and finally recognized that a political democracy could not flourish with the mass of South Africans remaining impoverished, landless and having no tangible prospects for an increasing standard of living (RDP, 1994). Therefore, the ambitions aimed at addressing these observations and conditions around the past and future of South Africa necessarily are ambitions aimed at the eradication of racial capitalism in South Africa. I claim that it is highly probable that if the ANC, in assuming power, had religiously followed the Freedom Charter and the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP), racial capitalism would be well on its way to eradication in the foreseeable future. Upon receiving much negative feedback on the RDP plan by organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, the ANC was pressured to put the interests of economic liberalization over racial justice in redressing the impact of historical racialization of wealth creation. This compromise is evident in the 1996 adoption of the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) neoliberal policy, which favored the deregulation of markets and opposed state intervention in the economy (Schneider, 2003). Such privatization clearly ignored the fact that the poor black majority would be made unable to participate, considering there is no substantial effort in GEAR that aims to equitize and equalize the starting positions of black and whites in economic participation (Reddy, 2011). The adoption of neoliberal policy, despite unconvincing theories on neoliberalism and the perfecting nature of capitalism, was a compromise that allowed continued white monopolization with only one or two elements of emancipation for the black poor (Schneider, 2003). In short, the adoption of neoliberal policies after Apartheid protected and consolidated white economic interests. The adoption of an unregulated capitalist market with limited government intervention meant that white people could retain the wealth and endowments they accumulated over 200 years of settler colonialism and Apartheid in South Africa (Schneider, 2003). While it is true that negotiation and compromises during the regime transition made provisions for political emancipation, they did very little in reality to provide sizeable and immediate economic emancipation, leaving South Africa in a crisis of racial capitalism. Despite an attempt at political negotiation and economic compromises, white people still earn five times more than blacks in South Africa, despite the country being majority black (Stats SA, 2017). There is a systemic economic problem, which cannot be removed from the clawing effects of a historically racially discriminating economy; endowments and privileged market access still remain largely skewed to the white minority in South Africa. It is unlikely today that South Africa will be able to get rid of racial capitalism - especially if the government fails to account for the influence of racialized intergenerational endowments. IV. Racial Capitalism as Material Life: Service Delivery Protest and Black Entitlement Service delivery protests in post-Apartheid South disprove the idea that racial capitalism is incompatible with the new black majoritarian democracy. As I have discussed, moderate economic policy approaches to poor black people can, to some extent, be held responsible for the lack of improvement of the material life of black people post-Apartheid. The service delivery protests display the anger in the black living memory of Apartheid, characterized by a feeling of imprisonment under racial capitalism. These protests can be used to explain that the traditional notion of black entitlement must be replaced by a new understanding, which normatively asserts poor black people’s entitlement to decent service delivery from the government. Black entitlement should not imply the unwillingness of black people to be active participants in the free market economy, but rather, black people fighting back the dispossession faced at the hands of their government. The concept of black entitlement is barely developed in existing literature. It is a concept discussed in the early 2000s when the ANC government first attempted to create a welfare state by providing free housing to the poor in the township communities. There were frequent claims that black people were waiting for the government to do everything for them while remaining idle and free riding on taxpayers’ money. Thus, black entitlement has been used to describe a negative character trait which I believe has been fallaciously attributed to the black poor class. I believe that this concept remembers the past with amnesia by ignoring the economic effects of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. By implying that we are all equals today, it wrongly attributes the continuing economic inferiority of black people to their choice to rely on the government rather than uplift themselves. To date, it is clear that neoliberal policies have not benefited those who need economic reform the most in South Africa: The black poor. In 2016, Aljazeera reporter Sophia Hyatt wrote about the living conditions of a 28-year-old woman from the township of Langa in Cape Town. This woman slept on the floor of a small hostel room with her parents, two sisters, and son, and had to use unhygienic and damaged communal toilets a long distance away from the safety of home (Hyatt 2016). This reality is not just hers, but that of over half of South Africa’s population. This low standard of living is common in most townships and slums all over South Africa, which perversely find themselves cheek to cheek with South African economic hubs - for instance, Alexander township borders Sandton, “Africa’s richest square mile”. Despite the government’s mildly socialist attempt to provide basic services, many poor black South Africans still find themselves living the memory and legacy of Apartheid. It is due to these poor living conditions and the constant reminder of the opulence of white monopoly capital that we have seen a large surge in protest action all over South Africa over the last fifteen years. A service delivery protest is essentially public unrest caused by citizens in response to the government’s failure to address their key welfare concerns. The unrest comes in the form of rioting, marching and the general destruction of normalcy in government operations. In the government’s RDP plan, the ANC promised to provide free water, electricity, housing, and education to the South African poor and to create jobs to decrease the 23% unemployment rate (ISS, 2009). However, the government has proven to be highly inefficient in delivering on these promises, resulting in a disgruntled and disillusioned civil society which seeks to express their grievances the only way they believe they will be heard: through the very language of protest that brought black people political freedom under the ANC. Therefore, there is a certain frustration-aggression as put by Ted Gurr, which arises and brings about behavior that has the propensity to be violent (ISS, 2009). As they did during Apartheid, black poor people still have to find employment in urban areas, thus leaving their families in horrendous conditions in slum townships. These people wake up in the early hours of the morning to commute to city centers where they work predominantly in low skilled labor positions, such as cleaning and gardening. Given that their elected government’s policies have done little to improve their living conditions since the end of apartheid, black poor people are increasingly disillusioned with their political emancipation. It is due to these discouraging conditions that poor black South Africans are angry and protest violently all over the country, with what Carl Death terms the return of the imagination of rolling mass action, as seen in the height of civil disobedience in South Africa in the 1980s (Death, 2010). Poor black people have turned to angered demand and mass mobilization to advance their struggle for economic emancipation, replicating the tactics that secured the victory of political emancipation and the end of Apartheid (Death, 2010). This explains the rioting and protesting around dissatisfaction with democratic South Africa, as seen in the service delivery protests. V. A Small Step Towards Conceptualising Black Entitlement as a Response to Racial Capitalism in South Africa It is worth asserting that black people must be entitled to an equal footing in South African economic life. It is also erroneous to believe that the government has adequately addressed the impact of a historically racially segregated economy, law, and society on black opportunities to participate in economic life. The continued underrepresentation and dispossession of black people validate my claim that it is unfair to use black laziness and incompetence to explain black economic inferiority. Rather, racial capitalism must be identified as the cause. However, it is unlikely that racial capitalism will disappear if we do not start viewing black entitlement as a normative prescription - that black people should be entitled to radical economic redress. Black people should continue to feel entitled to adequate services and economic emancipation, as this is the only remaining fuel to the fire of resistance against racial capitalism. To legitimize the concept of racial capitalism as an explanation for South Africa’s present political economy, I recognize that there is one crucial question that needs to be tackled: Will racial capitalism persist over time or was it an isolated historical occurrence? I believe that racial capitalism can explain how historical disparities in endowments necessary for social mobility have generated economic inequality along racial lines. Since white superiority still remains at the core of resource allocation in our society, it is highly unlikely that race-based inequality will dissipate anytime soon, and thus racial capitalism will remain a relevant and powerful explanatory concept. VI. Conclusion By analyzing the intersection of race and capitalism in South Africa, I have shown that both Marxist and Liberal literature fails to account for the historical commodification of black people through racial inequality. While Liberal scholars state that racism is incompatible with capitalism, Marxist scholars erase black suffering at the hands of settler colonialism. The depiction of racial capitalism offered in this paper better represents the complexities of race relations in neo-liberal South Africa. Furthermore, my paper has challenged fallacies around black entitlement by highlighting that racial disparities in socioeconomic endowments have not been redressed. Thus, I have shown that irrespective of regime type in South Africa, racial capitalism has, and still does, dispossess and disempower the black poor, leaving them to feel that demanding economic emancipation through protest is the only way to make their voices heard. References Biko, Hlumelo. 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Reprint, SA History, 1994. http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/the_reconstruction_and_development_programm _1994.pdf. Reddy, E.S. "Freedom Charter And The United Nations". South African History Online, 2018. http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/freedom-charter-and-%20united-nations-es-reddy. Writer, Staff. "Whites Earn 5 Times More Than Blacks In South Africa: Stats SA". Business Tech, 2017. https://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/153485/whites-earn-5-times-more-than-blacks-in-south-af rica-stats-sa/. Hyatt, Sophia. "South Africa's Housing Crisis: A Remnant Of Apartheid". Aljazeera.Com, 2016. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/09/south-africa-housing-crisis-remnant-aparth eid-160929094237631.html. "The Reasons Behind Service Delivery Protests In South Africa". Polity.Org.Za, 2009. http://www.polity.org.za/article/the-reasons-behind-service-delivery-protests-in-south-africa-200 9-08-05. Death, C. "Troubles At The Top: South African Protests And The 2002 Johannesburg Summit". African Affairs 109, no. 437 (2010): 555-574. doi:10.1093/afraf/adq039. Osterhammel, Jurgen. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Translated By Shelley L. Frisch). Reprint, Princeton: Markus Wiener Pub., 2010.

Schedule F And The Future Of Civil Service Protections Sasha Bonkowsky Abstract Civil service protections in the United States, such as merit-based hiring, employee tenure, and the dismissal appeal , have come under attack in recent years, most notably from former president Donald Trump’s proposed Schedule F that would strip those protections from many federal employees. Under Schedule F, thousands of federal positions would become political appointees who could be dismissed at-will. This paper examines the history and justifications for exempting positions from traditional civil-service protections, as well as the feasibility for Biden’s Office of Personnel Management to forestall Schedule F. I conclude that Schedule F would likely have negative effects on government performance and morale, but that the OPM may not be able to effectively prevent implementation of Schedule F in the event of Trump’s re-election. Throughout President Donald Trump’s administration, he frequently attacked the federal bureaucracy for what he saw as its inefficiency or refusal to enact his policies. He was elected on promises of “draining the swamp” in American government; after the 2016 election, he repeatedly attacked a supposed “deep state” of insider operatives within federal agencies and departments who were ideologically opposed to him and used their positions in the bureaucracy, from which it was hard to dismiss them, to hamstring and block his agenda. Where Trump had appointment power, such as with agency heads or other political appointees, he was quick to remove those he saw as disloyal. However, many of his attacks were limited to mere invective. In the vast American civil service comprising more than two million employees, only 4,000 of those are political appointees that the president can remove at will. And in comparison to other democracies like the UK, France, or Japan, which all have similar civil service systems,, the US actually has many more political appointees. The rest are career employees. Career civil servants are usually hired using a merit-based, competitive examination system, in which all prospective employees are given the same exam, and those meeting or exceeding a particular score are hired. Once in the federal bureaucracy—and after a probationary period of several months to a year—employees usually cannot be dismissed unless they are found to be significantly derelict in their duties, and they can appeal a firing to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which can investigate and reinstate an employee if they have been unlawfully dismissed. There are certain exceptions to this process, known as Schedules A through E, but they are only used when the usual processes are deemed “impractical.” In October 2020, Trump signed Executive Order 13957, which would have significantly increased the number of political appointees. It created a new category of positions within the federal bureaucracy—known as Schedule F positions—that would be exempted from regular civil service hiring procedures. Instead of the examination process, the president would be able to handpick employees for positions that fell under Schedule F and dismiss them at will without worrying about an appeal to the MSPB, as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in its analysis of the order. President Biden repealed the executive order during his first days in office, writing that it “undermined the foundations of the civil service and its merit system principles.” But such an action is hardly permanent—after all, another future president could easily reissue the executive order. To avoid that, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a proposed rule in late 2023 that would prevent career employees from being excepted under Schedule F or a similar order. The proposed rule also stated that any employee who was reclassified as political appointee would still possess the same protections from being fired and could appeal any dismissal to the MSPB. However, it’s unclear if this proposal will take effect before the 2024 election and a possible transition of power. This paper first examines civil service protections and common exemptions—especially those for current political appointees—in more detail, before turning to the possible effects of Schedule F and attempts to block it. Data from the past 10 years of OPM rulemaking demonstrates that, on average, rules take about a year to be finalized, meaning that if this civil service rule follows the usual timeline, it may be too late to go fully into effect before a Republican president or Republican Congress could repeal it. Civil Service Exceptions The US civil service already allows certain positions to be excepted from the competitive service in five categories: Schedules A, B, C, D, and E. Typically, prospective civil service employees must take a general exam, from which the highest scorers (and those with veteran’s preference) can be selected for hiring. However, this process can be slow, and does not cover specialized knowledge that an agency might require. Positions excepted under one of these schedules can be hired without this usual examination process when it is determined that the exam would make it impractical to recruit adequate numbers of students from qualifying institutions, (under Schedule D), when urgency is required (under Schedule A), or when selecting for particular experience (under Schedule B), among others. Only one schedule deals with political appointments—Schedule C—and it functions most similarly to the proposed Schedule F. Schedule C allows excepted hiring for “positions which are policy-determining or which involve a close and confidential working relationship with the head of an agency or other key appointed officials”. These are often positions like press secretaries for individual bureaus within agencies, White House liaisons, or confidential assistants to secretaries and undersecretaries. There are usually between 1,500 and 1,800 Schedule C appointments at any given time, with 1,725 at the end of the first Bush administration, 1,538 at the end of the Obama administration, and 1,566 at the end of the Trump administration. These political appointments within the civil service didn’t always exist, and like the present-day Schedule F, Schedule C was the subject of significant controversy when it was first carved out in 1956 under the Eisenhower administration. One Democratic senator decried Schedule C as “an attempt to turn the civil service into a Republican grab bag” on the Senate floor, and the Democratic Party platform of 1956 stated that the Eisenhower administration’s policies “reflect prejudices and excessive partisanship to the detriment of employee morale”. The director of the Civil Service Commission defended them in the New York Times , writing that “the American people in 1952 expected your Administration to put into effect your announced policies…it is of the most vital importance that…policy-determining officials should be subject to change with any change in political administration”. Yet despite this public criticism, the Democratic-controlled Congress passed no legislation curtailing or ending Schedule C, and presidents of both parties have made use of Schedule C’s hiring authority. Several restrictions are placed on Schedule C positions and the ways in which they can be assigned. There are no “vacant” Schedule C positions which may be filled at will by the President—instead, any Schedule C positions must be approved by the director of OPM, and OPM’s authorization for those positions is automatically revoked when an employee leaves. Additionally, when requesting Schedule C exception, the head of the requesting agency must submit a statement to OPM that the position was not created in order to detail the employee to the White House—that is, assign them to work in the White House while still being paid by their original agency. This requirement was added after a 1990 GAO report found that Schedule C appointees were being inappropriately detailed to the White House rather than performing the specified duties of their positions. Though Schedule F and Schedule C may appear similar in their creation of low-level, politically appointed positions, the proposed Schedule F category would carve out much broader exceptions to the competitive service. Schedule C restricts its exceptions to appointments of a “confidential or policy-determining” character; Schedule F would allow exceptions to the competitive service for positions of a “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy -advocating character.” Policy-making or policy-advocating are much broader terms than merely policy-determining, and their definitions are statutorily vague, meaning they could be applied to a much greater number of employees. The executive order drew its legal basis from Section 7511 of Title 5 of the US Code, which excludes employees “of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character” from competitive examination procedures and protection from dismissal. Determination of whether an employee’s job fits these requirements are made by the President and required to be authorized by the head of OPM. This exception, however, had never been put into practice before. The effects of Schedule F implementation are unclear. The executive order was issued in late October 2020, directing that agencies should submit a list of positions that would fall under Schedule F and their reasons for selecting those positions within 90 days (on January 19, 2021). Agencies were also directed to submit petitions to the Federal Labor Relations Authority to determine whether excepted positions under Schedule F would also be excluded from collective bargaining authorities. Few agencies—15 in total, out of over 400 federal agencies—submitted information to OPM, many claiming that they needed more time. Of those, just four agencies submitted names and lists of positions for conversion: the International Boundary and Water Commission proposed converting just 5 employees of its 234, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed 579 employees of its 11,000, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed 836 of its 1,166 employees, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed 436 of its 527 employees. One issue is these agencies are not particularly representative of the bureaucracy as a whole—the IBWC and FERC are independent commissions, and OMB is deeply embedded in the White House—and so it remains unclear exactly how many employees would be affected by a future implementation of Schedule F. However, the authors of Schedule F have definite intentions for its use and assumptions of how many employees it might affect. The executive order was largely crafted and written by James Sherk, a member of the Domestic Policy Council focusing on labor policy. In 2017, he submitted a memo entitled “Proposed Labor Reforms,” in which he argued for the possibility that “Article II executive power gives the president inherent authority to dismiss any federal employee. This implies civil service legislation,as well as other protections for federal employees, (such as preventing their dismissal for joining a union) are unconstitutional. If so, the President could issue an Executive Order outlining a streamlined new process for dismissing federal employees”. Three years later, he would see that executive order realized in the creation of Schedule F. At a panel discussion for the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) in 2023, he continued to argue in favor of this proposition, saying that “every federal employee should serve at the pleasure of the president”. Given the limited data submitted by agencies, there’s no set number of employees Schedule F might affect. Experts, and Sherk himself, have estimated around 50,000, although Sherk noted the number as a low estimate., In the same NAPA seminar, he said that “I think there's ways you could broaden the scope of the order…I think you could expand it beyond 50,000. Say to like, 200,000. 300,000.” Former Trump administration officials have reportedly “saved lists of previous appointees…as well as career officers they viewed as uncooperative and would seek to fire based on an executive order to weaken civil service protections”, although such lists have not been made public. But having the ability to fire employees, or doing so, doesn’t necessarily mean the administration would be able to fill the positions. The Trump administration was slower than other administrations to nominate officials to key positions, other civil servants rated Trump appointees as less competent than previous Republican administrations or career civil servants, and the Trump administration faced difficulties finding even officials to fill top-level positions. While the Trump administration was able to authorize and fill about as many Schedule C positions as previous administrations, that doesn’t necessarily mean they would be able to fill Schedule F positions given the vastly larger number of them. Besides the numerical scope of its effects, Schedule F was also defended as necessary to improve the efficiency of the federal bureaucracy. The text of the executive order itself cited “long delays and substandard-quality work for important agency projects” as part of its rationale, and stated “agencies need the flexibility to expeditiously remove poorly performing employees”. Many stakeholders that GAO interviewed acknowledged that the speed of federal hiring should be improved, and that Schedule F would streamline that process; one also told GAO that “employees in Schedule F positions should be…more motivated to quickly and effectively implement the President’s policy agenda”. Criticism of a slow-moving and unresponsive bureaucracy, in which onerous hiring procedures and strict removal protections hamstring the agencies themselves, has been long-standing. Presidents and agencies alike have bipartisanly seen problems in the hiring process and sought to reform it: the US National Performance Review in 1993 wrote that “hiring is complex and rule-bound” in the civil service; a Bush-era report from the Merit Systems Protection Board wrote in favor of reform that would “provide agencies the flexibilities they need to effectively manage” and recommended that OPM should “speed the process” of federal hiring; and the Obama administration in turn issued guidance on simplifying and overhauling the civil service hiring process. The picture is little better in terms of firing underperforming employees: it’s long been understood that civil protections reduce the power of incentives, such that employees in government see little connection between performance and job security. But Schedule F seems unlikely to accomplish these reforms in a way that benefits government performance. Several of the stakeholders which GAO spoke to said that Schedule F could make recruitment of federal employees more difficult, as potential applicants might be leery of taking a Schedule F position if they believed they could be removed after a change in administration or for other political reasons. This is in line with the theory advanced by Gailmard and Patty, which states that civil servants are incentivized to build expertise when tenure provides them the stability to make such an investment. David Lewis writes in his book The Politics of Presidential Appointments, drawing on the example of the OPM in the 1980s and 1990s, that, while “politicization helped change policy,” it came at the expense of “long-term agency capacity and reputation…experienced career professionals left the agency and it was hard to replace them [or] recruit bright young people to work in the agency.” New meta-analysis of the meritocratic civil services on government performances found that associated practices such as tenure or merit-based hiring are broadly associated with stronger government performance and lower corruption. With an eye towards a potential future reissuing of the executive order, authors conclude that “converting career employees to Schedule F and removing their civil service protections is likely to degrade government performance”. Rulemaking To Prevent the Reinstatement of Schedule F The Biden administration and Democrats more broadly share similar concerns about Schedule F’s potential impact on the federal government were it to be reinstated by Trump or another future administration. Congressional Democrats have attempted multiple times to pass bills which would prevent Schedule F’s reinstatement or add amendments blocking Schedule F to must-pass defense appropriation bills. However, their efforts have been blocked by Republicans. Bypassing the legislative method, Biden’s OPM released on September 18, 2023, a proposed rule entitled “Upholding Civil Service Protections and Merit Systems Principles,” aimed as a regulatory method to prevent future administrations from reissuing Schedule F. The rule would: allow employees moved from the competitive service to the excepted service to retain their civil service protections unless the employee voluntarily relinquishes them. redefine “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating”—the language which Sherk and the Trump White House relied on to craft the executive order—to mean only non-career, political appointees. allow employees moved from the competitive service to the excepted service to appeal the move to the MSPB. This would, in essence, cut out the heart of Schedule F: removing its legal basis and specifying that converted employees retain tenure protections, such that converting their positions to the excepted service does not make them at-will employees. OPM draws its authority to make these changes from Chapter 75 of Title 5 of the United States Code, specifically 5 U.S. Code § 7514 and 5 U.S. Code § 7504, both sections which give OPM broad discretion to regulate civil service protections for federal employees. OPM also asserts its authority based on 5 U.S.C. 1103(a)(5) and 5 U.S.C. 1302 to make specific regulations about the procedures of moving employees between the competitive and excepted service, pointing out that OPM has repeatedly exercised that authority in the past (and indeed, regulated that movement in the implementation of Schedule F). The proposed rule closed its 60-day comment period on November 17, 2023, during which time it received 4,096 comments. With the strong support of the Biden administration and the leadership of OPM behind it, the rule is expected to move forward. However, the proposed rule has been the target of criticism by Republicans and people associated with the Trump 2024 campaign—which gives OPM a potential impending deadline. Almost certainly, if Trump wins the 2024 election and the rule is not finalized by his inauguration, he will direct the OPM to drop it; and even a finalized rule could be subject to overturning by a potential Republican Congress under the Congressional Review Act. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) is a tool that Congress can use to overturn federal regulatory actions, which was enacted as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act in 1996. The CRA requires that agencies submit finalized rules to Congress and the GAO 60 legislative days before they take effect: if Congress passes a resolution of disapproval of the rule within that time period and the President signs it, or if Congress passes such a resolution over a presidential veto, then the rule cannot go into effect. Because of the threat (and exercise) of presidential veto power, rules have been overturned under the CRA only immediately following a change in presidential administration, in 2001, 2017, and 2021. However, the deadline for finalized rules to avoid CRA review by a potentially hostile Congress or President is not just 60 days before a new president could be inaugurated (that is, late November). Congress has 60 legislative days to consider rules—and if Congress adjourns sine die during that period, the 60-day period resets in its entirety beginning on the 15th day of the new legislative session, in what’s known as a “lookback” period. In 2017, that meant that the Republican Congress was able to disapprove of rules finalized as far back as May 2016. Thus, in order to be certain that it will go into effect, OPM must finalize its rule by mid-2024. But the question is if it will be able to do so by then. In the 2023 Fall Unified Agenda, published by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), OPM specified that it is targeting April 2024 for publication of a final rule. Based on historical precedent, this would provide the rule enough time to avoid reconsideration and potential disapproval from the next Congress. But OPM’s projected timeline may be overly optimistic, given its past timelines in publishing final rules. I collected data on finalized OPM rules between 2023 and 2013 in the Federal Register and examined how long it took between publication of the proposed rule and publication of the finalized rule. Since OPM’s proposed rule at hand of upholding civil-service protections has been defined as “significant” under Executive Order 12866 (likely due to its potential to “raise novel legal or policy issues arising out of legal mandates [or] the President’s priorities”), I restricted my search to only those rules which were similarly deemed significant, as they require a full review by OIRA that lengthens the rulemaking process. I also did not include OPM rules that were issued only as interim final rules rather than undergoing a full notice-and-comment period. The full list of all OPM rules meeting these criteria and their timelines can be found in Appendix A. Below are the summarized results: FIGURE 1: OPM RULEMAKING AVERAGE TIMELINE Notes: The timeline of OPM rulemaking is defined as the number of days between OPM’s publication of a proposed rule and the publication of a final rule. Several outlier rules took more than three years to be finalized. Data sourced from the Federal Register, 2013-2023. FIGURE 2. OPM RULEMAKING TIMELINE BY YEAR Notes: OPM published no significant final rules in 2017. Data sourced from the Federal Register 2013-2023. On average, it took 473 days between OPM issuing a proposed rule and OPM issuing a final rule. Even after eliminating the major outlier rule that took nearly 6 years to finalize, the data still suggests that it generally takes over a year to finalize a rule after it is proposed. Though the timeline varies slightly year by year, there is no clear pattern that would allow us to infer that the OPM of 2023-2024 finalizes rules significantly faster or slower than the OPM of, say, 2013-2014. If this timeline holds for OPM’s rule undercutting Schedule F, we can project that OPM will finalize the rule sometime in December 2024—too late to avoid a potential disapproval under the CRA. However, one case study of similar civil-service rulemaking demonstrates that potential CRA review is not the same as certain CRA review. On September 17, 2019, the OPM under Trump issued a proposed rule that would more strictly enforce the probationary period before employees were accepted to a competitive service position and sought to streamline civil service removal procedures. In many ways, this rule was a precursor to Schedule F, drawing on the same language and reasoning about an ineffective federal government that couldn’t remove underperforming employees. The rule was finalized on October 16, 2020, a timeline which would have allowed the 117th Congress under unified Democratic control to review and disapprove it. They didn’t. It’s not entirely clear why not: congressional disapproval of rules cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and 20 days after their proposal can be discharged for a floor vote by a minority of 30 Senators. More likely, the Democratic Congress preferred to let rollback occur through the agency processes: there were only three rule disapprovals in total in 2021 of Trump-era rules, but many more were overturned by agencies’ new leaders. But that process takes time, and so it was only in November 2022 when OPM finalized its rollback, meaning the Trump-era changes were in place for almost two full years of the Biden administration. The OPM’s proposed anti-Schedule F rule would likely follow a similar track. An OPM under Trump would certainly seek to undo it, even if the rule is successfully finalized and put into effect without disapproval—but as in the case above, it would likely take them months or years to do so. A rule undoing this one would also be open to legal challenges that an executive order would not be, and the Trump administration faced significant challenges in successful rulemaking. Previous administrations succeeded in roughly 70% of challenges to agency actions, while the Trump administration had a dismal 23% success rate in legal challenges due to bypassing procedural requirements, providing incomplete analyses of policy effects, or taking action which exceeded an agency’s statutory authority. Conclusion Whether or not OPM manages to finalize its rule and put it into effect successfully, the fight over the structure and protections of the civil service is unlikely to end in 2024 or beyond. In recent years, long-held civil service practices of non-politicization and tenure protections that were largely taken as established have come under increasing attack, largely from Republican officials and presidential candidates. In recent years, it’s the executive branch which has been most involved in determining the structure of federal civil service, from the Schedule F executive order to OPM’s proposed rulemaking, and attempts for similar legislation have been blocked or stalled out before making major progress, and research has largely focused on the president’s and agencies’ influence. But Congress has historically been the instrument of major changes to the civil service, from the Pendleton Act to the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978—and it’s only recently that Congress has ceded that power to the executive. While research such as this examining the direction, scope, and timing of executive influence over civil service is certainly beneficial given the political context, one potential direction for further research could be an examination of Congress’ role in civil service in the past, and what potential legislative actions would be beneficial in future. 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*Feature* Jorge O. Elorza Jorge O. Elorza Mayor of Providence, RI Spring 2018 The strength of a society is a function of how equally its members share in its growth and progress. In a time when people throughout the country feel as though they are being left behind, Providence has invested in a full cradle-to-career approach to help all of our residents reach middle class by middle age. There is no single intervention that is either necessary or sufficient. Instead, what makes the difference is two fundamental beliefs: first, the understanding that a comprehensive infrastructure of support is required in this work, and second, that the community itself must be involved in designing the system. The City is taking a holistic approach to our economic revitalization process by hosting hundreds of community conversations across the City to help inform decisions around major projects. After hearing from our residents, we’ve prioritized investing in innovative educational programming to address historic inequities; creating dynamic workforce programs more suitable for an inclusive new economy; and leveraging our inherent strengths to produce more sustainable growth. One of our City’s greatest strengths is our diversity – nearly 60 percent of our public-school students come from homes where English is not the primary language spoken. Combined, students and their families speak 31 different languages and hail from 52 countries of origin. As mayor, one of my priorities has been to invest in innovative cradle-to-career programming to give all our students a competitive advantage in their education and eventually, in their future careers. The City has hired school culture coordinators for all middle schools who will serve as role models and provide support to students. To answer calls for better facilities, the Administration also announced a plan to invest up to $400 million in school infrastructure throughout the next 10 years. A yearlong public visioning process for school repairs, in which hundreds have already participated, was launched for a five-year plan that will later be submitted to the State. Here in Providence, only one out of three kindergarten registrants enter the classroom at the appropriate literary benchmark. Through Providence Talks, a nationally recognized program that aims to close the 30 million-word gap that separates children who grow up in less affluent homes from their peers who are raised in middle- and high-income households, we are working to ensure that every child enters kindergarten ready to succeed. By providing free or low-cost innovative programming and initiatives, we are making sure that students will continue to build upon the strides they make all school year long. Our Eat, Play, Learn summer initiative ensures that our youth are spending their summers participating in outdoor, educational and thoughtful programming. Last year, we served over 188,000 free summer meals and distributed 15,000 summer reading passports where students could track their reading progress. Providing students with tools and resources needed to succeed in the 21st century is also among the highest priorities. That’s why we’ve set an ambitious goal of providing every Providence student with access to a tablet, laptop or computer in the classroom by the end of this summer. To close the digital divide, the City launched a partnership with Sprint, which has committed to providing 600 kids from all ten high schools with free 24/7 access to high speed internet throughout their high school careers. We’re also helping adults adapt their skills to the changing demands of our economy. With the launch of the Office of Economic Opportunity in July 2017, the City undertook critical work to provide training, support and resources to residents, particularly those unemployed or underemployed, to connect them to employment or prepare them to launch their own business. The City also supported Amos House’s A Hand Up program, which has offered over 350 people experiencing homelessness daily work opportunities. Through the Providence Business Loan Fund (PBLF), we’re helping existing businesses launch, scale and innovate, promoting economic dynamism and productivity. Under my administration, the PBLF has been restructured and rebranded and now has a board knowledgeable in lending practices with upgraded loan underwriting and record-keeping standards. Over the last three years, the PBLF has issued nearly $2 million in loans to help local businesses expand and create new employment opportunities. As the City is working to couple students, residents and entrepreneurs with better opportunities, we must also improve connectivity between our world-renowned public and private organizations to create new prospects for collaboration. Providence is an educational powerhouse – we are home to eight colleges and universities including Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design and the culinary arts institute Johnson & Wales University. In addition to these assets, we also possess eminent healthcare and cultural institutions. The City of Providence is teaming up with these institutions to expand employment opportunities and reinvent our Downtown. Partnering with Brown University, the University of Rhode Island College of Nursing and Rhode Island College and the state, the City could redevelop a century-old power station – one of its most iconic and beautiful buildings – to produce one of Providence’s greatest historic preservation success stories. This project is a perfect example of what is possible when the private sector joins with ‘Anchor Institutions’ to make something meaningful happen. Preserving and reusing our historic former industrial spaces is creating new energy in our Downtown Jewelry District, catalyzing development in the I-195 land, and promoting the new knowledge and innovation-based economy. When I-195 was relocated and 20 acres of Downtown land was suddenly made available for redevelopment, we were able to capitalize on this momentum to attract the interest of distinguished organizations such as Wexford Science & Technology and Cambridge Innovation Center. Providence is utilizing our inherent strengths and new tools to leverage rapid growth in ‘New Economy’ sectors such as food and biotechnology. In addition to having some of the most critically acclaimed restaurants in the country, Providence is growing as a food hub. As consumers are increasingly focused on healthier, locally-sourced and sustainably-produced foods, Providence is strategically positioned to take advantage of this economic trend. Food production, processing and other commercial industries can provide light manufacturing jobs to Providence residents as locally-sourced foods become more popular. Take, for instance, the case of Farm Fresh RI – Farm Fresh began in 2004 as a student project at Brown University to develop a direct connection between local farmers and residents. The nonprofit now operates 11 farmers markets, coordinates the distribution of more than $2.2 million in locally-grown food to more than 80 vendors and 200 customers annually and operates two Harvest Kitchen programs that have trained more than 300 young people who were directed into the job-training program through the state’s juvenile justice system. This model represents a paradigm shift in the way that we think about – and support businesses. Farm Fresh was recently awarded an $850,000 loan through the PBLF to relocate from Pawtucket to a 60,000-square-foot building it plans to construct on 3.2 acres in our Valley neighborhood. An attractive factor of the national trend is that when investments are made in local food, those dollars are reinvested in creating jobs and spurring the local economy. That’s why it’s particularly a growth area that we want to emphasize. In Providence, we’re preparing our talent and organizing our assets to produce long-term sustainable growth that is both inclusive and equitable. By making long-term investments in our schools and students, we’re inspiring the next generation to learn and empowering them to succeed. Through innovative workforce development programs and public-private partnerships, we’re catalyzing economic growth and attracting significant investments while creating sustainable employment opportunities for all of our residents.

*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEW, ANDRE PERRY: Andre Perry is a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, a scholar-in-residence at American University, and a columnist for the Hechinger Report. His work centers around issues of race, structural inequality, and education. His book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities , was published earlier this year, and he has had his work featured in MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, among others. May 2020 JPPE: Hey everyone, welcome to “The Difference Principle: Power and Inequality in America.” I’m speaking with Andre Perry, who is a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, a Scholar-in-Resident at American University, and a columnist for the Hechinger Report. His work tends to focus on race, structural inequality, and education, and it’s been featured in MSNBC, the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Post, CNN, among other places. He’s also the author of a new book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, and the report deals with the devaluation of assets in black neighborhoods, which deals with findings he produced at Brookings in a study and presented to the U.S. House of Representatives. Hi Andre, how are you? Andre: I’m doing well, good to see you. You forgot to add that I was a fellow when you were an intern at the Brookings Institution, so good to see you again. JPPE: Good to see you again. So the first question is: when you look at the recent movements to shine light on race inequality in the US, what do you see? Andre: Oh, I see an opportunity to really transform policy in the United States in a way that produces equity and upholds the values that the constitution and other similar documents have promoted but not necessarily operationalized. So for me, as a researcher of policy, it’s encouraging to have so many different types of people marching in the streets, demanding change—structural change. So that just gives me the cover to really produce the kind of research and analyses I think is needed during this moment, but it is also part of my life’s work. I’ve been writing and researching structural inequality for years, and so this is my time— this is (my) equivalent of a super bowl—when it comes to structural inequality. There’s so much at stake, and we have an opportunity to truly change and transform the way we distribute resources and services in this country, so I’m looking forward to the years ahead. JPPE: And I saw that you began your earlier work with a focus on education. You spent time as an educator, and as a dean I saw as well, which I didn’t know, actually. And your most recent book and a recent report that you wrote for Brookings deals with these issues of housing, and you set up your book with what I thought was a really interesting anecdote where you describe your family background with an estranged biological mother and a father who was killed in prison at 27, and then you discuss it in the context of these feelings of not belonging and seem to extend that to the black experience in America. In your testimony in front of the House you said, “The value of assets building schools leadership and lend itself are inextricably linked to the perceptions of black people. How much of the demand that impacts housing price is affected by how people are perceived,” and it seemed that in your book you emphasized this point through the case studies that you highlighted in order to show this idea that our concept of equity is corrupted by an idea that white people are the “gold standard.” Practically, this manifested in the tangible form of black real estate being devalued by as much as 156,000,048,000 dollars. So, where did that shift to housing come from, and why did you choose to orient towards that? Andre: You know, kids don’t live in schools; they live in communities. Often times, when we are talking about academic performance, we ignore all of the other structural barriers that impede a child’s education. I wanted to examine all those other structures that impact children, so I could get at how they impact education, and what was clear to me is that it’s almost impossible to isolate education as a root cause of inequality, but a lot of people try to do that. They’ll say, “if we could only fix the school then everything will be alright.” JPPE: Right. Andre: And, you know, that’s just not true. So much of academic performance is predicted by forces outside of school: what kind of job your parents have, what kind of education your grandfather had, home prices, transportation, the criminal justice system. All of these things have an impact on children’s and parents’ lives, which end up playing out in the schools themselves. So I wanted to say, “hey, so enough of blaming schools for society’s problems with policy” because when you blame schools, you essentially have little room but to blame teachers and students and people in that school, and that’s just misguided. I say throughout my book—and it’s become a mantra of mine— that there is nothing wrong with black people that ending racism can’t solve. I say that to get to that we’ve got to stop blaming black people. There’s this white supremacist myth that says the conditions of black cities and neighborhoods are a direct result of people in them, and that white supremacist myth also plays out in our efforts to reform schools. We blame teachers, we blame students, we blame school boards, but we treat school boards and school districts like we treat black districts—we treat black school boards and black districts like we treat black people. “We will take them over, we will impose all kinds of restrictions on them, we do things we would never think of doing to a white district.” And so I started looking at other sectors and said, “hey, teachers are not to blame here.” In particular, black teachers: in my education chapter in Know Your Price, I outline the added value that black teachers bring in particular, and so when you see reform hit hard in many districts, and you see a reduction in the black workforce, you go, “hey, this is contradictory to what to the goal of reform is, and that’s to provide opportunity.” And people have to remember: kids eventually grow up and become adults, and we’re cutting off job opportunities for black folks—what the heck are we educating black people for? So the point is that I wanted to look beyond education in schools, because it is often used—or school reform is often used— to advocate our responsibilities for dealing with all the other structures that impede growth in black children and families’ lives. JPPE: So when you think about those other structures that impede growth, how do you delineate some of the other forces that have played a role in rising inequality since the 1970s that people might talk about: financializiation, technological disruption, globalization, and so on? How do you delineate that from the things that are specifically affecting black communities and the role of racism? Andre: Well, I took an approach where I wanted to identify assets that we could measure in terms of the impact of racism on it. And then what I did was I just started going asset by asset and just examining the impact of racism, and eventually I will have some grand theory of how all these things come together. But at least for now I just started looking at different sectors, and this is where housing came into play. Housing—there’s so much data that you can pull from to measure housing. And what we did in preparation for the book—and it’s sort of the anchor study—we examined housing prices and black neighborhoods where the share of the black population was greater than fifty percent and compared them to neighborhoods where the share of the black population was less than fifty percent. And a lot of people say, “yeah the black neighborhood prices are going to be lower because of crime, because of education.” So, we sought out just to control for many different social factors just to get an “apples- to-apples “comparison. And after controlling for all those things as well as many of the “Zillow metrics” you see, we found that homes in black neighborhoods are devalued by twenty-three percent, about 48,000 per home, accumulative there is about 156 billion in lost equity, and we know that people use that equity to start businesses. In fact it would have started up more than four million businesses based on the average amount blacks use to start up their firms. It would have funded more than eight million four-year degrees based on the average cost of a public four-year degree. It’s a big number. And I look at the devaluation, and the reason I say devaluation is because, again, these assets are strong, but they are devalued, often times purposely, through policy. And so my goal with this is—I’m not quite there where I can offer up a grand theory that could be applied to things like globalization and commercialization and things like that. However, I do know we have plenty of evidence to say that the value of assets are mitigated by their proximity to blackness. And we’re corrupted in terms of how we value these particular assets by the preconceived notions of whiteness and blackness, obviously whiteness being of higher value and blackness being of lower value. That plays out many different ways; you just saw, my study looked at home prices, but there was just a major study that was just released that’s getting a lot of headlines that shows that black communities pay more in property taxes than their white counterparts. Thirteen percent more. JPPE: Wow. Andre: And that generally comes about because there’s always been municipalities that charge black communities higher in taxes because of this perceived over-usage of services. They perceive black people overusing services, so they charge higher rates, but that’s also come from just a negative perception. These things play out many different ways. I just identified, like, six different ways devaluation occurs and hope to keep adding onto those ways so I’ll be able to offer a theory of sorts in the future. JPPE: Well, one question I have just listening to you talk about that is: I kind of wonder how you deal with the issue of hearts of minds, of there being these ingrained ideological forces that are just baked into the psyche of people, where there is a certain underlying racism. How do you deal with something like that? Because it seems like that might be difficult to address with just a single policy. Andre: I wrote the book—it’s a policy book, but it’s narrated using first-person narrative. I use a lot of biographical sketches, lots of case studies because getting at this issue of changing hearts and minds, I think you have to do both. You can’t simply make the head case to people. You also have to make a heart case, and more importantly, you have to make a case for culture change. I wanted to show how these racist ideas and devaluations play out in the lives of researchers, family members so they could see—in sort of real terms—what this means or what this says about our culture and what we need to change. So I think people will be pleased to see that I’m talking about a lot of heady policy ideas, and I try my best to scrub all the jargon off of them and really talk plainly. That’s something I always recommend policy folks do: don’t get caught up in your own policy community and talk your way out of compelling others to join in on the fun. But I purposely really try to bring out the data in the context of the lived experience so that people can really absorb them in a way that can excite change. You can’t do just a heart case or a culture case—you have to have something that addresses the real concerns in terms of intellectual nature of the policy. Is it harmful? Is it negative? And you have to show it in the numbers, and numbers don’t mean much when culture will overrun it. We see that in terms of bad policymaking. We will push bad policy because it fits into our notion of what America is or what we think it should be, and so we have thousands locked up in cages right now along the US-Mexico border because of negative perceptions of brown folks. We have got to look at culture when we talk about policy, and so that’s what I think my book does. JPPE: And when you look at how to build opposition to race inequality, in addition to cultural movements and engaging with people and as you said, changing hearts of minds, there are also these political questions of how you choose to champion policies that can help reduce race inequality and the effects of systemic racism wherever it might appear. One question I want to ask is about how best to do that. One the one hand, you might make the case that by championing general progressive causes that might level inequality and create equality of opportunity. You might be able to address some issues of race inequality through something like that, and it seems like there were subtexts of that when President Obama was running in 2008 when he was championing what became the Affordable Care Act. So how do you weigh the benefits and trade-offs of emphasizing these broad and underlying economic issues that really speak to—or attempt to speak to— everyone versus focusing more narrowly on: how do we deal with the specific problems that are spurring race inequality? Andre: People don’t understand how anti-black legislation negatively impacts the entire country. You can actually produce policy responses to racism that address the anti-black policies of the past while showing how this will have a positive impact on us all. You know, I look at housing devaluation and show how home prices in black neighborhoods are lower. Now, white people live in those neighborhoods too, and their home prices are lower, too. If you address the anti-black nature of housing pricing, then you improve the quality for a whole lot of people, not just black folks. So in addition, we still have to address race and racism. To say that the impacts of red-lining, which by the homeowner’s loan order corporations in thirties which drew red lines around black-majority neighborhoods, deeming them unworthy of investment in the form of low-interest home loans, that practice haunts black people to this day. The wealth gap is enormous. The immediate wealth of white families about 170 thousand and compare to seventeen thousand for black families. About ten times difference between the two. That was created because of anti-black policy, and we have to have remedies for those who have suffered because of that anti-black policy. So, what’s interesting is that after COVID—after three weeks of COVID and social distancing— people were saying, “give me . . . I need relief for my business, I need relief to pay the bills,” and I say, “well, try being socially distanced for generations.” And so yes, black communities need relief. You can call it a relief package, you can call it reparations, you can call it some type of race-based solution, but what COVID made clear is that the federal government has a responsibility of uplifting its citizens when times are hard, particularly when the federal government caused the harm. You know, between slavery, Jim Crow segregation, legal housing segregation, a biased criminal justice system. All of those things have caused harm—extreme harm—to the economics prospects, the social prospects of black Americans, and we need to remedy those. So yes, we can address anti-black policy by showing how it lifts all folks, so to speak, but if we really want to be equitable, the country should rally behind providing the kind of relief to black residents and citizens that is similar to how we provided relief to white people after the depression and other groups. JPPE: And certainly one thing that’s interesting about this moment, too, is that there are a lot of calls for policies and ideas that might have seemed radical a decade ago. Discussions of reparations or defunding the police seem much more widespread, at least to me, and I’m wondering, when you look at policies that are important to champion right now, what are some that you would like to see particularly? And if we removed the question of political feasibility, what are some policies that you ideally would like to see? Andre: Well, I have to say, I am absolutely ecstatic about the “defund the police” movement, and I’ll tell you why. Not only does it get at what is important in terms of increasing economic mobility, it also says that we need to move money in ways that reflect our priorities as a country and as a neighborhood. So, it’s clear that investments in police literally arrest economic mobility of the residents. I say this all the time: nothing says that a black man doesn’t belong in an economy like a police officer carefully kneeling in the back of the neck of a person and taking his life in broad daylight. That’s a statement about belonging in a community, and so for me, we’ve got to really look at this “defund the police” movement seriously as a framework. I’ve been telling people, “what’s your defund the police in education?” It’s obvious you can actually defund policing in schools—there’s a direct link—but the point is, what money are we going to move to excite economic growth? For me, I’m excited about this moment because we’re really putting a spotlight on the barriers—the structural barriers. It’s not upholding the tradition that black people are to blame, that parents are to blame. . . We’re getting at policy, real policy, real practices that have significant impacts on our daily lives. JPPE: I want to conclude with a quote from your book that I think speaks to a lot of what you just said. You said, “I want people to fight for power. It means getting elected. Sometimes it means going out in the streets. It means going into court with devaluation data that I’ve produced. It means suing the appraisal community. It’s going to take a lot of mobilization because again, racism doesn’t just go away. This is a conversation about power and taking what’s rightfully ours.” What do you say to people who say that they don’t necessarily want to work within the system; that it hasn’t gotten better and it won’t so long as they work within the system because the system has continued to find new ways to calcify inequalities on the one hand or generally preserve its towers of privilege? Andre: Well, I say, to them, protests and movements that are directly confronting the systems and the harms of systems—we need that. You don’t get change without outside agitation. And sometimes that might look like something burning in the streets. It might come in the form of marches. It might come from civil unrest in many different forms. But, let’s be clear: you don’t get police reform in this country by working within the system. You get it from what we’ve seen from over the last few months: by hitting the streets, demanding change, crowding the courtroom, and finding alternative means of being. At some point we need different types of housing structures. We need to look at cooperative housing, for instance. We need new ideas around community—neighborhood—safety. We need new systems, and that’s going to come from the outside. It’s going to come from demanding change. So for me, I see my role as an insider—you know I work at a mainstream think-tank—but I get energy from folks on the outside. I want to be a resource for folks on the outside. So now I have cover, as a member of a marginalized group, to put forth research and data that often is devalued because I am also devalued as a black man in a mainstream think-tank. So I’m all for working from the outside. That’s the only way change occurs, really—substantive change. For me, I look at television— I march as well, and I’m, like, giddy. I’m like, “yes, this is what we need: doing the things that insiders won’t do.” And that’s why we’re in the position we are today. JPPE: Andre, thanks so much for your time. Andre: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Author Name < Back Shoring Against Our Ruin: An Investigation of Profound Boredom in Our Return to Normal Life Virginia Moscetti Returning to campus after what felt like a lifetime of virtual schooling, quarantining, and all the other cheerful aspects of living and studying during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was thrilled to finally return to a normal college experience. And yet, it has been anything but normal. Besides the fact that the pandemic continues to drag on indefinitely, bringing with it certain indispensable COVID prevention strategies, like mask-wearing and bi-weekly testing, there is something more obstructing my return to the normal, pre-pandemic college experience I had so eagerly anticipated. My old routines now feel empty, and my previous passions and interests have fallen flat. I trudge about daily life listlessly, keeping up with my academic and extracurricular commitments simply because I don’t want to royally screw up the rest of my life. In short, I am bored, and I’m not the only person to feel this way. According to a recent article by Times Magazine, approximately 12 million Americans quit their jobs last summer. For Americans between the ages of 20-34, 14 million have either resigned or neglected to join the traditional workforce. While some resigned in pursuit of higher wages and better working conditions, a significant portion of Americans sought non-traditional jobs or simply reveled in “funemployment”. This phenomenon, informally termed “The Great Resignation,” is deeply connected to the pandemic and our recent quasi-return to normal. During the initial stages of the pandemic, everything came to a standstill. Going to work, walking to class, living in a dorm, and frequenting friends and family was no longer possible. Daily routines, as a result, altered substantially. We became accustomed to working, studying, and interacting through screens from the relative comfort of our homes. We developed hobbies to pass the time. Our relationships changed, for the better and also for the worse. Ultimately, everyone desperately looked toward a final return to normal, but with the semi-normal return that came, we were strikingly confronted with how much had changed within the world and within ourselves. With so much change, a return to pre-pandemic existence seems impossible. What one did then is not the same as what one does now, and, by extension, our possibilities for individual meaning-making in the world are not the same as our previous ones. Unable to authentically recreate past forms of meaningful doing and acting in the world as they used to exist, the attempt to do so in our quasi-post-COVID life becomes pervaded with a sense of meaninglessness. Going to work a specific job because that is what one used to do is no longer a sufficient justification for working it now, especially since, with so many people quitting their jobs or taking untraditional work trajectories, the structure of a working life has substantially, perhaps even normatively, changed. Unless that work continues to generate meaningful fulfillment, reenacting old ways of performing one’s daily life can produce a diffuse sense of indifference or boredom. In The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics , 20th century philosopher Martin Heidegger describes the boredom resulting from a confrontation with a sense of meaninglessness in our actions and routines as the phenomenon of “profound boredom.” Heidegger argues that in profound boredom, we are exposed to the structures of our existence and, through that exposure, can newly discover meaningful ways to project ourselves into the world. In this paper, I will investigate the extent to which Heidegger’s profound boredom is reflective of the form of boredom playing out in contemporary society and how his solution might offer a productive remedy. In order to do this, I will reference T.S Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” a poem which copes with widespread disillusionment in modern society following the devastation of World War I and the increased technological advancement in the Second Industrial Revolution. Examining both Eliot’s and Heidegger’s representations of boredom, I will demonstrate (1) how boredom can take on existential proportions, (2) how globally disruptive experiences can instantiate this boredom, and (3) how this boredom may be resolved by acknowledging our own facticity and our own freedom to choose how we want to act within our world by meaningfully repeating past possibilities of doing and acting. Comportment, Dasein, and The One According to Heidegger, all individuals have a particular style or way of interacting with the features of the world. This style, which Heidegger terms comportment, is structured by an individual’s goals and projects. In short, what they find meaningful. For instance, entertaining the ultimate goal of becoming a philosopher, I am oriented and disposed towards the world accordingly: I choose to undertake an undergraduate major in philosophy, I dedicate myself to my philosophy courses, and I choose to attend graduate school all for the sake of this goal. As I do so, I develop a particular manner of comporting myself toward (i.e., a particular way of acting in) the world. This comportment, while it pertains uniquely to each individual, is superimposed upon the individual’s “Dasein”. According to Heidegger, human beings are a particular type of entity which he terms “Dasein” – it can be loosely translated from German to mean “being-there”. Dasein interacts with the features of the world to advance its own particular goals and projects which illuminate a certain “style” or way in which Dasein approaches the world. As Heidegger describes, Dasein performs its actions and activities (i.e., its being) according to this particular style or comportment. Reciprocally, Dasein’s actions and activities reflect the comportment through which it approaches them. For example, if I entertain the ultimate goal of becoming a philosopher, I comport myself and am disposed toward the world accordingly: I choose to major in philosophy, I dedicate myself to my philosophy courses, and I choose to attend graduate school all for the sake of this goal. In pursuing certain projects and goals, I develop a particular manner of comporting myself toward (i.e., a particular way of acting in) the world. Additionally, the way that I act and do things (my comportment) both reflects and constitutes my understanding of myself. As I perform the actions that reflect the goal of becoming a philosopher, they also inform and constitute how I understand myself to “be” or act within the world as this particular individual which finds such and such projects meaningful. Thus, by attending my philosophy classes, I reinforce my understanding of myself as someone who loves philosophy and aims to become a philosopher. Of course, I can do things that would seemingly be “out of character” or at odds with my regular comportment, but in designating such an instance as “out of character,” I directly make reference to a contradiction between how I understand myself to act and a particular action or instance. Thus, to use Heideggerian terminology, as Dasein performs its being according to a particular comportment, it relates that comportment to the understanding of itself as itself, so that the mode in which it enacts its being is synchronized with how it understands itself to be. While, being in the world according to a particular comportment, I do, act, and choose things that reflect a particular understanding of myself, what I do, how I act, and what I choose is invariably subject to what is available to me within my world. Just as I could not build a house without the tools to do so, I could not pursue a career in philosophy if philosophy were not an established (or at least an existent) field of study. Accordingly, Dasein’s involvement in the world is structured by the features and beings present and accessible to it within that world. Dasein’s being in the world is also a ‘being-with’ others. Being-with becomes especially apparent in the manners in which Dasein interacts with objects and other features of the world through historical and culturally contingent social norms. For Heidegger, these conventions are exemplified through “what one does.” For example, one shakes hands when meeting a new person, one places one’s napkin on one’s lap at the table prior to beginning a meal, one drinks with a glass and eats with forks, knives, and spoons. While “one” does not designate any one particular individual, it designates an abstract collection of us (in which we are all included) that Heidegger terms the “They”. Insofar as I do as “one” does, I participate in the “They”, so that my actions reflect the larger social conventions of my community rather than what is meaningful and particular to me. By adopting these social conventions and rooting the “meaningfulness” of my actions within a contingent social order, I simultaneously flee the responsibility and accountability for my actions (as things which “I” rather than “They” elect to pursue) and relinquish my inherent freedom to pursue actions that are meaningful to me. Still, doing and knowing what one does fundamentally configures my “everyday” being-in-the-world (i.e., the way I act and relate to the world). As Mark Wrathall writes in How To Read Heidegger , “in the first instance and most of the time, we relate to others in the mode of ‘the one,’ which means that we understand ourselves in terms of what one says about the way one should live, that is, in terms of what one ordinarily does in situations that confront us”. Therefore, Dasein’s everyday existence (i.e., the typical or common way in which it is, both in terms of what activities it enacts and how) is, to some extent, immediately structured by what one does. For example, I go to the grocery store or the farmers market because that is what one does to purchase food in my community. At the grocery store, I acquire ham and other meats at the deli because that is what one does. My decision to go to the grocery store and my entire experience within that grocery store is organized by what one does. And this same structure applies to most of Dasein’s other everyday activities. Because Dasein’s “everydayness” is, to some extent, fundamentally structured by what one does, Dasein is never entirely inextricable from the “They.” Still, it is important to reiterate that “what one does” is not intrinsically meaningful in and of itself but a way of acting that reflects our socio-historically contingent norms and conventions. During our pre-pandemic existence, departing to work or school, completing errands outside of the home, and visiting and engaging with others in physically close proximity was simply what one did and, as such, characterized our “everyday” existence. In enacting these doings and activities of “what one did,” we became oriented toward and learned to relate to the world in terms of the pre-pandemic “one.” Consequently, the pre-pandemic understanding of what one did formed part of our self-understanding, or understanding of our everyday they-selves which, in turn, undergirded those particular selves we claimed to be or exist as. For example, a college student understands his everyday they-“self” as a college student (at least partially) in terms of what one does in college. In the pre-pandemic world, this meant attending classes within a classroom, studying in a library alone or amongst friends, securing internships, discovering a potential career path, perhaps occasionally partying. As he performs these things, he relates them back to his self-understanding as a “college student.” During the seemingly interminable months of quarantine, daily life underwent a fundamental transformation. Everyone, to some extent, conducted their social, academic, and work lives on various virtual platforms. Thus, what one did and how one worked altered drastically during quarantine. For our anonymous college student, virtual schooling and socializing became integrated into his everyday existence, and thus formed part of his everyday “self,” or how he acted and understood himself to be as a college student. Now, emerging out of quarantine with our quarantine beards and unshaven legs, we are tasked with what feels like the Herculean feat of “returning-to-normal” pre-pandemic life and what one did in that life. And yet, because we established a new normal and thus a new definition of what one does during quarantine, that “return” implies reproducing a performance or rehearsal of oneness that is, after such significant change since the onset of the pandemic, no longer applicable or even existent. As a result, the prevailing expectation of a return to normalcy confronts us with a conflict of “oneness” in which what one did and how one understood oneself to be as a college student, as a software engineer, doctor, or librarian is no longer what one does or how one understands oneself to be as such in our current world. In other words, the pre-pandemic “one” no longer determines our performance of “oneness.” However, here we are confronted with another problem: what does one do now? And by extension, how does one even understand oneself to be in the world? Is our college student still a college student within the pre-pandemic social definition and understanding of the term after spending close to a year in a virtual social and academic environment? Does he even understand himself to be the same college student that he once was before the pandemic? If not, is he left without anything to refer to in order to devise meaning and intelligibility from the strange, anomalous current life-experiences he must undergo? And, what if his goals and projects changed during quarantine? Must he now rehearse, along with all of us, what one did in the pre-pandemic life with those same goals and projects despite their inability to cohere with his current way of relating to the world? What are the implications of this rehearsal of pre-pandemic one-ness for Dasein who, after so much time understanding itself, relating to the world, and, as it were, devising meaning of its existence through the social conventions and modes of being associated with quarantine, must now adopt a performance of one-ness that is no longer meaningful to it; that no longer reflects how it understands itself to “be?” Published in 1922, six years after World War I and approximately fifty years after the onset of the Second Industrial Revolution, T.S Eliot’s modernist poem “The Waste Land” appears to cope directly with the implications of meaninglessly rehearsing “what one did.” In Part II of the poem, A Game of Chess , a man and woman are having a disjointed conversation. The woman anxiously exclaims “What shall we do? What shall we ever do?” to which the man responds cryptically: “ The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.” In asking what they will do, the woman expresses an existential concern for meaningful, fulfilling “doing” or action. The man, however, suggests that no such doing is possible and that they are instead condemned to a life of listlessly repeating old routines until death or some other existential “knock upon the door” delivers them from it. The poem famously purports to diagnose the catastrophic ills and pains of modern society in the post-war period. With the unprecedented violence of World War I and the increased mechanization of modern society following the Second Industrial Revolution, the profound and diffuse listlessness that Eliot describes appears to be symptomatic of the failure of traditional values and certainties such as religion, family life, and canonical forms of art and literature to infuse human life with meaning in this new context. As the poem describes, religion, challenged by the immense loss of human life and the increase of sexual promiscuity in the war, could not save, family and domestic life could offer no sanctuary, and traditional art forms could no longer accurately depict or reflect human life. While their failure to create meaning implies a kind of fracturing between a pre-war and post-war society in which the modern individual now found itself situated, this failure also discloses the fundamental contingency of socio-cultural norms, values, and traditions. If these values and certainties were inherently meaningful in and of themselves, they would continue to be meaningful irrespective of the contexts and conditions in which they were applied. However, because these values and certainties somehow seemed to lose their meaning for those subjects in the poem and the larger modern society confronted with a sense of meaninglessness and boredom in daily life, they were forced to recognize that their presumed meaningfulness was a self-contrived illusion, or, perhaps, ask themselves “what is wrong with me that these things have lost their meaning?”. Since these traditional values and certainties structured how one (to an extent) related to the world, and by extension, what one did, their failure to create meaning likely produced a sense of boredom in those daily routines which revolved around “oneness” (which might have included, going to church, honoring traditional marriage, relationship, family, or other such dynamics in the domestic sphere, reading Shakespeare, etc.) and configured the “everyday” self. Because what became boring and meaningless was what one did, life was not boring to Dasein as this or that particular individual, but to Dasein as “one-self,” or the everyday self that acts, understands itself, and relates itself to the world in terms of the “One” and what one does. While the “one-self” may not be the particular, subjective self, because it informs, at least in part, how that particular self acts, the boredom encountered through the meaninglessness of Dasein’s everydayness problematizes how Dasein projects both its particular “self” and its they-“self” (as two, essential prongs of one and the same self) into the world. This is distinct from other forms of boredom (such as boredom with a specific object, social setting, event, etc.) in that it overwhelms Dasein’s every action in the world. As such, it can be understood within Heidegger’s notion of “attunement.” Attunement describes a state of mind that disposes us toward the world in a particular way. In order to explain this notion, consider the following hypothetical situation: while sitting in my room, I suddenly hear sirens blaring, people shouting and running, and see smoke leaking out from under my door. I become wholly overwhelmed with fear and alertness, leading me to scour the room for the closest exit or something with which to extinguish the imminent flames. My fear has completely altered the landscape of my environment so that certain objects become alternatively relevant and irrelevant to me depending on how they could be used. The pencil, for example, becomes irrelevant to me while a blanket by my bedside and an open window are relevant insofar as they might serve me in extinguishing the fire or escaping the room. As a result, my fear, as well as any other type of attunement, discloses that I must accept the circumstances of my world as they are revealed to me and what actions may be possible within those circumstances. While I submit myself to these circumstances, they also disclose opportunities for action or ways of utilizing certain objects that “matter” to me, or are significant to me to the extent that they help me extinguish the fire or escape the room. As a result, attunement constitutes how I am disposed toward the world and reveals my disclosive submission to that world. Like fear, profound boredom is a type of attunement in that it reveals our “disclosive submission [to the world], out of which we can encounter something that matters to us.” According to Heidegger, the confrontation with meaninglessness in Dasein’s everyday self can instantiate profound boredom (in which it is “boring for one”). In and through this confrontation Dasein is left “pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door” and is attuned to the world through profound boredom. Let us explore what this means through Jonathan Caballero, a 27 year old software developer who decided to join millions of Americans in quitting their traditional, pre-pandemic jobs. As a software developer, we can assume that in his pre-pandemic office space, Caballero may have perceived chairs, computers, conference rooms, telephones, among other things. He also had access to the different meanings implicit in these objects and the setting as a whole; the chairs, in the context of the office, may be for clients or co-workers to sit in, the computers to conduct programming with, respond to emails, type, etc, the telephone to communicate with, the conference rooms to host important office or client meetings, etc. In addition, we can assume, insofar as Caballero worked in this office in the pre-pandemic era, he comported himself in a particular way toward this office; a comportment that was structured by and made manifest a certain self which he (1) understood himself to be and, thus, (2) projected into the world. Thus, he was invested in the office space and its equipmental totality (i.e., the telephone, the computer, the conference room) as this particular self and for the sake of the projects, interests, and passions that are, to some extent, prescribed by the “one” but also reflect his own particularity as an individual. Each object, then, is meaningful to him through what they make possible toward advancing his multiple projects as his understood self which he understands himself to be. The telephone may be meaningful as a vehicle through which Caballero secures clients who may then elect to employ his services and, in doing so, secure the promise of a paycheck, and thus, fulfill his project of acquiring financial stability, the computer may be meaningful as the site of his work-activity in which he practices and improves his craft toward fulfilling his additional project of being an exceptional software programmer, and so forth. Additionally, the way in which Caballero came into contact with these objects, and by extension, the meaningful possibilities they imply, was in a nine-to-five, traditional working time-frame and environment. In other words, Caballero’s work, for which he was paid, did not simply consist of interacting with a certain kind of equipmental totality toward doing the work (in this case, software programming), but, because that work existed in a larger socio-cultural working structure, consisted of physically going to an office and being in that office space for a set period of time. Why? Because that is what one did as a member of certain sectors of the American labor force. One went to work, one spent time at a specified working location, and one returned home after the work day. Therefore, while his multiple projects (such as securing financial stability and being an exceptional software programmer) were made possible by the fact that those objects in his setting were used, and thus, could be used by one toward advancing these projects, these projects were also made possible by what one did, or more specifically, how one (within this particular sector of the American labor force) worked. Consequently, while they were made possible by how one worked, insofar as Caballero continued to work in terms of this oneness, his projects were also constrained to it. Caballero, then, projected himself meaningfully (to the extent that these projects are meaningful to him as that particular self which he understands himself to be) into the office space in terms of how one worked. This was his “everyday self.” Inevitably, during quarantine, Caballero began working virtually along with most other Americans. For him, this may have meant working from home, zooming into meetings fresh out of bed and still in his pajama pants, and spending what would have been his daily forty-five minute commute to and from the office by instead jumping in his pool and discovering new hobbies and interests. Assuming that the majority of his social community underwent a similar, if not identical, experience, not only did what he did change, but also what one did changed. Thus, one began to act in and relate to the world in a new way, ultimately leading each of us to understand ourselves in terms of this new, quarantine-generated way of being and relating to the world. Being a software engineer, or a college student, no longer implied physically occupying a particular location in physical proximity with others, but implied instead working, communicating, and socializing remotely. Returning to the pre-pandemic work life in this context, Caballero is tossed suddenly back into performing certain features of what one did, such as commuting to work, leaving the comfort of the home, and engaging with people face to face. His routine is now at odds with what he did and, by extension, what one did during the quarantine months. Because quarantine introduced a new performance of oneness and, thus, a new way of relating to the world, how Caballero presently understands himself to be, not simply as a software engineer but as a member of the socio-cultural world in which he exists, conflicts with the daily routines, or performance of everydayness, imposed upon him through the collective return to regular, pre-pandemic work life. Thus, these new routines, because they do not reflect how he understands himself (both as that particular self and as the one-self- which undergirds and gives rise to his particular self) are no longer meaningful to him. In addition, while this collective return strives toward pre-pandemic normalcy, this return breaks down as remnants of the pandemic continue to structure everyday existence. His current routines, while similar to pre-pandemic work life, ultimately fail to mean to him as such because they are, in a literal sense, not the exact same. In sum, then, Caballero cannot fully relate to the re-introduction of old, pre-pandemic routines into his daily life, and the performance of oneness they imply, because (1) what one does currently in these same routines is still somewhat different from what one once did, (2) quarantine changed his community’s performance of oneness, and thus, how he relates to the world in general, and (3) he understands himself, both as a particular self and as member of socio-cultural world in which he exists, differently than he did before the pandemic. Unable to relate to his routines as he once did, they fail to create meaning for him in the way that they had in the past, and he finds himself rehearsing a set of routines and performances that are meaningless to him (i.e. do not mean to him as in the way that they once did). Thus, he may exclaim to himself, staring at his computer in his old office space with his mask slipping beneath his nose, “What shall I do? What shall I ever do?” To which the One replies, “a lunch break at 12:00, a commute home at 4:00, and we shall try to know each other through our masks, pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.” Like Eliot’s speakers, a profound boredom may pervade his entire approach to his office setting, his social life, and his entire rehearsal of a one-ness that no longer corresponds to his particular interests, goals, and passions as a particular self or his self-understanding within the socio-cultural framework in which he exists. Answering the phone, commuting to work, sitting in an office, these actions no longer mean to him as they once did. He feels profoundly bored. And, in feeling profoundly bored, he is attuned to his equipmental totality (i.e., the objects that are contained within his environment) and the settings in which they occur in terms of this boredom. However, because Caballero is bored with the rehearsal of a past one-ness and a past version of himself implicit in and made possible by this one-ness, his boredom extends beyond the confines of the office. Going to lunch with friends, returning home, cooking his dinner, he is progressing listlessly through the motions of old routines. While working from home may have been a situation particular to Caballero and his social community, most Americans, to some extent, experienced fundamental changes in their routines and daily life during the quarantine periods in the peak of the pandemic. Thus, the phenomenon of profound boredom that I address in this paper, while it varies widely in its causes for each individual, remains a seemingly wide-spread experience in our “return-to-normal” life. As Heidegger writes, in profound boredom “we are not merely relieved of our everyday personality, but elevated beyond the particular situation in each case and beyond the specific beings surrounding us there. The whole situation and we ourselves as this particular subject are thereby indifferent... Indeed this boredom does not even let it get to the point where such things are of any particular worth to us. Instead it makes everything equally great and equally little worth.” “Being relieved of our everyday personality” here means no longer going about our lives as either one does, or as the particular self (which is inevitably, to some extent, structured by “oneness”) that, through its comportment, Dasein understands. For example, instead of attentively picking up phone calls, quickly responding to emails, and meticulously conducting his work (and thus meaningfully re-enacting “how one worked” toward the realization of some particular project as that particular self), Caballero, in this boredom, is detached from and indifferent to the office environment, what one would do, and what he once did (as his past, pre-pandemic self) in that particular environment. In other words, he is indifferent to how objects in that environment may serve the realization of the projects that are meaningful to him. However, he is not only indifferent to what one does, but what one does becomes indifferent to him. The equipmental totality of his world and the beings included in that world (that designate, through “how one worked,” how that totality might or should be utilized) no longer offer him any possibility of acting out his project, which has become meaningless; they “refuse” him meaning. As Heidegger writes: There is a telling refusal on the part of beings for a Dasein that… in the midst of these beings as a whole comports itself toward them (toward them, toward those beings as a whole and their now telling refusal) and must comport itself toward them, if it is indeed to be what it is. Dasein thus finds itself delivered over to the being's telling refusal of themselves as a whole. As Dasein, Caballero inevitably comports himself toward the world as the particular self which he understands himself to be. However, because this “self” has fallen flat, or is no longer meaningful to him, he comports toward a world without meaning or possibilities in that comportment. Therefore, beings as a whole which once created and gave rise to new meaningful possibilities for him as that self, now “refuse” him those meaningful possibilities. This “telling refusal” by beings as a whole constitutes the first essential, structural moment of profound boredom: being-left-empty, being without meaning to be discovered in beings as whole. However, in telling refusingly, beings as a whole also highlight the possibilities for meaning-making that Dasein has exploited and are no longer meaningful to it. Sitting in his office or his home, his computer, his clients, his pens, his telephone, his friends, and his dinner table all refuse Caballero meaning as objects and beings through which he can act out his “self-hood.” In his profound boredom, the interaction with these beings and objects signals to him that they cannot be employed toward meaningful action because they imply a commingled performance of one-ness and a particular “self-hood” that are not meaningful to him. For example, his dinner table is no longer meaningful for him as something which one now, in our quasi-post-pandemic world, uses again (and thus makes possible) to dine amongst friends, but an object, which, in his profound boredom, points to his incapacity for meaning-making by continuing to exploit the possibility of “how one now uses” a dining table. Because using the dining table as such involves rehearsing a performance of pre-pandemic oneness that no longer corresponds with how Caballero understands himself (perhaps because he has since become uncomfortable with hosting dinner parties or having people over in general), his interactions with the dining table disclose (or “point to”) his inability to find meaning by continuing to exploit the possibilities involved in what one did before the pandemic. In revealing his exploited possibilities (i.e. the doing as both one and he once did) “ .. .there occurs the dawning of the possibilities that Dasein could have, but which are left unexploited precisely in this “it is boring for one,” and as unexploited, leaves us in the “lurch”. In other words, confronted with the meaninglessness of his own rehearsal of what one used to do before the pandemic (and consequently, the rehearsal of his particular, pre-pandemic self which understood itself in terms of a pre-pandemic oneness) and the possibilities for acting within that oneness, he becomes aware of other unexploited possibilities for acting. As a result, the telling refusal of possibilities carries, by association, a telling announcement of the possibilities he has not yet exploited. This telling announcement does not point to any one unexploited possibility for meaning-making, but rather points (arbitrarily) to the fact that there are possibilities that he has not yet explored. However, because these possibilities are left unexplored in Caballero's total and complete boredom with the world in general, he does not take up meaningful action and is thus, as Heidegger writes, “left in the lurch” or entrapped in a kind of limbo of inaction. This “being-left-in-lurch” or “being-in-limbo” in which Caballero is confronted with but does not act upon unexplored possibilities comprises the second structural moment of profound boredom: because “being-left-in-limbo” precludes a kind of meaningful moving forwards, it has a certain temporal feeling. When beings and the possibilities they create for meaning-making (i.e., a doctor makes possible the use of a scalpel as a medical tool, and thus, a meaningful tool for particular purposes) refuse themselves to Caballero, they refuse themselves as a whole: they refuse themselves in every respect, or in every respect, retrospect, and prospect, such that every past possibility that he exploited becomes meaningless to him as the version of his “self” he enacts has fallen flat. Likewise, any future, to-be-exploited possibility toward projecting that version of himself is also meaningless to him. But to whom do these possibilities refuse themselves? Not to Caballero as Caballero the particular, subjective individual, but to Cabellero as that self which acted in and related to the world in terms of a pre-pandemic one. As such, it is not boring for Caballero as the individual person, but boring for him as “One” or insofar as he continues to rehearse a kind of oneness that is no longer meaningful to him. But in the context of his own boredom with that pre-pandemic self that causes his possibilities as that self to recede, that pre-pandemic-self does not lose its determinacy, “but rather the reverse, for this peculiar impoverishment which sets in with respect to ourselves in this ‘it is boring for one’ first brings the self in all its to nakedness to itself as the self that is there and has taken over the being-there of Dasein. For what purpose? To be that Dasein”. In other words, in his profound boredom, as the meaningful possibilities for acting are refused to him as a pre-pandemic-self, he becomes aware of this refusal of the pre-pandemic self, and consequently, becomes aware of the self itself, or the self which he has chosen to project over his existence (i.e., “being-there” or Dasein) in the world. In becoming aware of that pre-pandemic self, he becomes aware of (1) the fact that he has chosen to be or act as that self, (2) rehearsing what one does or what one did is not inherently meaningful, and (3) that, as a result, in his existence as Dasein he has the possibility to choose other selves that do not adhere to the “one.” For example, it is possible for him to take advantage of new socio-cultural possibilities that are becoming available such as: the emergence of partially or fully virtual employment, the shift toward smaller in-person social circles, and the new, national emphasis on self-care and mental wellbeing. Thus, his boredom discloses to him that he must accept the circumstances of his world as they are revealed to him and what actions may be possible within those circumstances. The circumstances, and by extension, the world itself, thereby determines how he can act. Since he must accept the world’s determinations as to how he can act, he necessarily submits himself to the world. Still, this submission is not entirely passive. Instead, because his boredom reveals that he is capable of enacting a self (in this case, his pre-pandemic self), he becomes consequently aware of the possibility of enacting other selves and other ways of performing “oneness” that are gradually being made possible to him and to all of us in general. As a result, his boredom reveals the originary capacity of Dasein to make-possible other selves and the fact that he can choose to make-possible other selves that are meaningful to him. Confronted with the immensity of Dasein’s capacity to make-possible, without any definite direction as to what self or possibility he should enact, he is “held-in-limbo.” The phenomenon of “being-held-in-limbo” also involves a unique form of temporality. Refused any meaning by rehearsing the pre-pandemic one-self by beings as a whole, Caballero is refused meaning in every respect, retrospect, and prospect, or in the past, present, and future. In this way, beings-as-a-whole are no longer open to him along a temporal horizon, and the possibilities that they present along this horizon are closed off to him as him self because he is no longer interested in them as future possibilities for meaning-making nor finds his past actions and exploited possibilities meaningful. But, if beings as a whole refuse themselves in terms of a temporal horizon, such that Caballero cannot move forward meaningfully in time alongside them (or, in recollecting, conceive of past instances of action as meaningful to him), then they also make manifest those possibilities which he has not yet exploited in terms of a temporal horizon. The unexploited possibilities are things which he may have done in the past (retrospect) or can do in the future (prospect). Confronted with Dasein’s capacity for making-possible in the past and future, he is not only held-in-limbo at the immensity of the unexploited possibilities available to him, but entranced in time insofar as these possibilities remain unexploited. For example, thinking back to his past experiences in the office or in his training to become a software developer, he may discern other opportunities that he did not take up such as, perhaps, working in a satellite location in New York City or South America, working at a different corporation, or becoming a doctor, engineer, or astronaut,. Conversely, thinking toward his future, he may discern possibilities that are available to him in the here and now. And yet, insofar as he does not take up these possibilities, he remains entranced in time such that he remains indifferent to his past, present, and future and cannot move meaningfully forwards or backwards in time. He breaks this entrancement and transcends his boredom by experiencing “the moment of vision.” As Heidegger writes in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics , “the moment of vision is neither chosen as such nor reflected upon and known. It manifests itself to us as that which properly makes possible, that which is thereby intimated as such only in being entranced in the direction of the temporal horizon and from there, intimated as what could and ought to be given to be free in Dasein’s proper essence as that which makes it most intrinsically possible, yet now in the entrancement of Dasein is not thus given.” The moment of vision is not experienced as a dramatic, transcendental instance, but as a kind of realization of the fundamental, originary properties of Dasein (i.e., “what properly makes Dasein possible”). As a being-there which comports itself understandingly toward that being, Dasein’s capability to enact a self and comport itself as that self in the actions and choices it undertakes is fundamental to its existence as Dasein. Thus, the moment of vision involves a “resolute disclosure of Dasein to itself,” or an awareness of Dasein’s own freedom to choose which self it wants to enact and then enacting that self that it chooses. Because Dasein’s self-enactment occurs along a temporal horizon (i.e., Dasein understands itself to be its “self” through past actions and choices taken as that self, enacts that self in the present, and projects that self in the future), its entrancement in time during profound boredom intimates, in its being refused meaningful action and doing in every retrospect, respect, and prospect, Dasein’s capacity to engage in meaningful action and doing within a temporal horizon. Thus, the instance in which Caballero resolutely discloses his own freedom to choose a self he wants to enact to himself, he experiences a kind of “moment of vision.” Soon after returning to his regular pre-pandemic job, Caballero quit and started looking for jobs with better remote work options. Now, we can assume that Caballero has time to jump in his pool in-between meetings and pursue those hobbies and interests that were otherwise impossible with his daily, pre-pandemic commute. By quitting his job and choosing to explore an alternate possibility of post-pandemic one-ness that is meaningful to him (in that this possibility enables him to engage with aspects of his life that became important to him during the pandemic), Caballero has exercised his essential freedom as Dasein and altered his comportment toward the world in a way that enables him to engage in meaningful doing and action in every retrospect (i.e., his past experiences have given way to his new self-enactment and are thus meaningful to him) respect (i.e., his current choices and actions now harmonize with what is meaningful to him), and prospect (i.e., his future choices will be meaningful to him insofar as he continues to enact that self which enables him to realize those projects which are meaningful to him). In sum, by altering his comportment toward the world, Caballero enacts a new self within that world, one that authentically (insofar as this new comportment reflects what is meaningful to him) incorporates and utilizes “oneness” toward realizing and fulfilling himself meaningfully. Importantly, this transformation in how he comports himself toward the world involves a meaningful repetition of “what one did.” While Caballero, as a member of a particular socio-cultural framework which requires some degree of financial stability in order to continue participating within that same socio-cultural framework, continues to work, he does so in a way that enables him to pursue his other interests and passions. Thus, he repeats or rehearses oneness (i.e., the socio-cultural emphasis on financial stability) in a way that is meaningful to him as a particular self. Reciprocally, how he comports himself toward the world (i.e., rehearses oneness) as that particular self manifests that which is meaningful to him (i.e., those projects, interests, and passions that comprise his “for-the-sake-of-which”) as that self. While T.S. Eliot and Heidegger were distinct writers and thinkers, they both seem to proffer the meaningful repetition of one-ness as a solution to profound boredom. In Eliot’s work, his meaningful repetition of “oneness” is exemplified by the structural fragmentation within his poem “The Waste Land . ” Throughout the poem, Eliot includes miscellaneous fragments of Dante, Shakespeare, Greek myths, as well as ancient languages such as Sanskirt. On a superficial level, these fragments produce a sense of disorientation and confusion within the reader who must now assemble these fragments toward a cohesive interpretation of the poem. While the reader’s sense of disorientation parallels modern society’s confrontation with meaninglessness and subsequent inability to ground existence in meaningful forms of doing and action in post World War I society, the fragments also illustrate how aspects of past, traditional pieces of literature can be assembled or “repeated” in a way that allows them to meaningfully reflect the modern experience. In the final section of the poem “What The Thunder Said,” Eliot begins by describing an apocalyptic scene in which “there is no water but only rock” and Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, London, all descend into “unreality.” Here, Eliot describes the literal and spiritual devastation of Western civilization. The downfall of Jerusalem, Athens, and Alexandria all represent the inability of Ancient Western religion, art, literature, and history to salvage modern society from its ruinous apocalypse of meaningful action and doing by grounding that doing and action in the traditional values and certainties that characterize them. Instead, the downfall of London and Vienna, describes the devastation of a modern society unable to meaningfully ground itself in its Western socio-historical traditions and values. Thus, London, Vienna, Alexandria, Athens, and Alexandria, become “unreal;” they no longer possess or provide a meaningful reference point for real modern life to guide itself. Following this apocalyptic scene, Eliot writes at the end of the poem: I sat upon the shore Fishing, with the arid plain behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih. Sitting upon the cusp of the poem’s conclusion and fishing for meaning within the “arid plains” of the apocalypse looming behind him and before him, Eliot attempts to reinvigorate fragments of canonical pieces of literature by “organizing his lands” or assembling them together in new ways. The line “ Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina ” is an allusion to Canto 26 of Dante’s “Purgatorio”, meaning “then he hid in the fire that refines them.” According to Sussex University Professor Cedric Watt’s explication of these last ten lines, “the ‘he’ is Arnaut Daniel, the medieval Provençal poet. He has just told Dante that he repents the sins of his past and looks forward to the heaven that he will eventually reach after suffering the purgatorial flames.” The following line “ Quando fiam uti chelidon ” from the anonymous Latin poem ''Pervigilium Veneris” means “when shall I be like the swallow.” In this poem, “the raped Philomela has undergone a healing metamorphosis into a songbird, making her complaints sound as joyous as a song. The next line, “O swallow swallow,” refers to Alfred Tennyson’s lyric in “The Princess” in which “a swallow is flying south to warm lands, away from the earthbound poet.” Finally, “ Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie ,” a line from Nerval’s ‘El Desdichado’, meaning “The Unfortunate or Disinherited Man,” a French poem with a Spanish title, means “The Prince of Aquitaine at the ruined tower.” According to Watts, “the gist of the poem is: ‘I’ve been through hell, but I’ve survived to tell the tale, I’ve known loss and grief, but I’ve had my dreams and can make songs of my experiences.” Independently, each of these lines refer back to larger poetic works, and thus refer back to the traditional literary structures, styles, and modes of human experience embedded in and advanced by these works. However, by separating these fragments from their larger poetic totality and compiling them together in a new structure, Eliot alienates them from the poetic works and traditional literary structures and meanings to which they pertain. By alienating them from their original works and compiling them together, Eliot also re-appropriates them in a creative way. Through this creative re-appropriation or repetition of these fragments, they ultimately produce a new narrative, one that neither of them originally pertained to or advanced. Essentially, this new narrative suggests that repentance or self-forgiveness will enable the grieving post-war civilization to transcend its own purgatorial limbo toward a kind of recuperation of meaningful doing and action in modern life. Because this narrative reflects and diagnoses the post-war human experience, Eliot’s creative repetition of past literary fragments enables him to meaningfully describe and reflect human life as it is, thus re-invigorating literature’s capacity to invoke human experience overall. As a result, the fragments “shore against his ruins,” or act as a buffer against his destruction as a poet in a dying artistic field and as a modern individual confronted with the meaninglessness of the traditional values and certainties implicit in socio-cultural norms. Eliot concludes the section ironically with “Why then Ile fit you, Hieronymo’s mad againe,” the subtitle of Thomas Kyd’s play The Spanish Tragedy meaning “why then I’ll fix it for you, Hieronymo’s mad again.” While the line acknowledges that his atypical poetic structure may induce readers to think him insane, Eliot’s “I’ll fix it for you” reaffirms us of his craftsmanship and ability to “fix” literature’s inability to capture and resolve modern society’s post-war sense of meaninglessness. The poem ends with the repetition of “shantih, shantih, shantih”, a Sanskrit word meaning peace or inner peace prayed at the end of the Upanishad in the Hindu religion. Pointing ambiguously toward Eastern modes of spirituality, Eliot leaves us to “fish” our own individual meaning out of his fragments. Because the poem incorporates a creative repetition of past canonical forms of literature toward developing a form that can meaningfully reflect the modern human experience, it attempts to restructure how “one” relates to and understands these canonical forms of literature. Instead of writings that can no longer invoke what it means to be human, Eliot’s fragmentation gives them a new applicability to the modern experience. Thus, Eliot’s creative repetition of how one related to canonical works makes those works newly meaningful to the post-war reader as a compilation of fragments, both within the poem (i.e., as resolving the poem’s central conflict) and as suggesting ways to transcend their own confrontation with meaningless and profound boredom in post-war society. Similarly, by creatively repeating and reassembling aspects of what one did in the pre-pandemic world with what one did during quarantine, we compile together a structure akin to Eliot’s fragmentation. Assembling these fragments of “oneness” in a new montage that authentically expresses how one, and how we each individually, relate to the world in the context of enormous crises, anxiety, and change, we can enact new possibilities of being and acting that are meaningful to us and, thus, shore against our own ruinous experiences with profound boredom and meaninglessness. While Heidegger’s “moment of vision” describes the instance we are disclosed to our own freedom to choose which selves we want to enact, Eliot’s fragmentation demonstrates how we can enact that self through meaningful repetitions of our oneness. While Caballero experienced a meaninglessness rehearsal of oneness in his return to the pre-pandemic work-life structure because it invoked a self that he no longer felt or understood himself to be, by quitting his job to pursue remote working options, he creatively assembles a performance of pre-pandemic one-ness (in that he continues to work) with a performance of quarantine one-ness (in that he begins to work virtually and make time for his other interests and passions) that reflects how he understands himself to “be” in the world. As such, the creative repetition of past possibilities seems to offer a productive solution to the post-pandemic phenomenon of profound boredom. As we each reevaluate our current rehearsal of oneness, quit our jobs, change our career or academic tracks, tighten our in-person social circles, restructure our relationships, and travel the world in pursuit of new possibilities for meaningful doing and action, we create new ways of understanding ourselves and relating to the world in general. Perhaps, a new performance of one-ness may be gradually unfolding before us. References Heidegger, Martin, and Edward Robinson. “Chapter 4, The They.” Essay. In Being and Time , translated by John Macquarrie, 149–68. Harper Perennial, n.d. Heidegger, Martin, William McNeill, and Nicholas Walker. Essay. In The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude , 136–52. Bloomington, Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1995. Wrathall, Mark A. “Everydayness and The One.” Essay. In How to Read Heidegger , 47–70. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2006. Chapters 5-6 Eliot, T. S. “The Waste Land.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Accessed February 12, 2022. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land . Watts, Cedric. “The Last Ten and A Half Lines of the Waste Land.” The Last Ten and a Half Lines of the Wasteland . Poets.org.Academy of American Poets, May 20, 2004. https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-modernism . Hsu, Andrea. “As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'.” NPR , NPR, 24 June 2021. Bruner, Raisa. “Why Young People Are Quitting Jobs-and Not Going Back.” Time, Time, 29 Oct. 2021. Fontinelle, Amy. “The Great Resignation.” Investopedia. Investopedia, May 5, 2022. https://www.investopedia.com/the-great-resignation-5199074 .

Mark Carney The Road to Glasgow is Paved with Data Mark Carney In a little over a year, the world will converge physically and virtually on Glasgow for COP26 hosted the United Kingdom in partnership with Italy. It will then be six years after the landmark Paris Accord, and the stakes could not be higher. Despite prolonged lockdowns of large swathes of the global economy, the earth’s car- bon budget continues to be rapidly depleted, the physical risks of climate change continue to mount, and the sixth mass extinction continues to progress. Paris was a triumph of commitment and process. Commitment by [193] governments to limit temperature rises to below 2 degrees, with a stretch target of 1.5 degrees. Process in the innovation of Nationally Determined Contributions, whereby countries set their own pledges, and the world transparently added them up to see whether those efforts did the job. That calculation, 2.8 degrees of warm- ing even if all countries fulfilled their pledges, was as sobering as it was disciplined. And it set the tone on the road to Glasgow: climate policy in the public and private spheres would be driven by data and data analytics because slogans won’t solve an existential crisis. In the event, many countries have fallen short of their pledges, and the IPCC estimates that the world is on course for up to 4 degree warming by the end of the century. At current rates of emissions, we have less than a decade left to stay within the carbon budget that keeps temperature rises below 1.5 degrees with 50% probability. Getting back on track will require a redoubling of public efforts and a quantum change in private investment. The IEA estimates that the low-carbon transition could require $3.5trn in energy sector investments every year for decades – twice the rate at present. Under their scenario, in order for carbon to stabilise by 2050, nearly 95% of electricity supply will need to be low carbon, 70% of new cars electric, and the CO2 intensity of the building sector will need to fall by 80%. For private markets to anticipate and smooth the transition to a net zero world, they need the right reporting, risk management, return optimisation. Our objective for Glasgow is to build these frameworks so that there is a new financial system in which every decision takes climate change into account. This requires a fundamental reordering of the financial system so that all aspects of finance— investments, loans, derivatives, insurance products, whole markets—view climate change as much a determinant of value as creditworthiness, interest rates or technology. A world in which the impact of an activity on climate change is a new vector, a new determinant, of value. Doing so requires new data sets and new analytic techniques. The challenges are enormous and the timescales tight, but the prize are protecting the planet while seizing the greatest commercial opportunity of our time. In order to bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial decision making, climate disclosure ( reporting ) must become comprehensive; climate risk management must be transformed, and sustainable investing ( returns ) must go mainstream. Reporting Catalysed by the G20 and created by the private sector, the Task Force on Cli- mate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is a comprehensive, practical and flexible framework for corporate disclosure of climate-related risks and opportunities. Since the TCFD set out its recommendations for climate-related disclosures, there has been a step change in both demand and supply of climate reporting. The demand for TCFD disclosure is now enormous. Current supporters control balance sheets totaling $140 trillion and include the world’s top banks, asset managers, pension funds, insurers, credit rating agencies, accounting firms and shareholder advisory services. The supply of disclosure is responding, with four fifths of the top 1100 G20 companies now disclosing climate-related financial risks in line with some of the TCFD recommendations. Suitable for use by all companies that raise capital, the TCFD recommendations include a mixture of objective, subjective and forward-looking metrics: - Include disclosure of governance , strategy and risk management ; - Establish consistent and comparable metrics applicable across all sectors, as well as specific metrics for the most carbon-intense sectors; and - Encourage use of scenario analysis so as to consider dynamically the potential impact of the risks and opportunities of the transition to a low carbon economy on strategy and financial planning. The TCFD will call on new skills from measuring Scope 3 emissions to assessing strategy, risk and performance under different climate pathways. The next step is to make these disclosures mandatory through initiatives by national authorities, regulators and international standard setters. Understanding and using such forward-looking impact disclosure will become a core skill across the private financial sector. Risk management The providers of capital—banks, insurers, asset managers—and those who supervise them all need to improve their understanding and management of climate-related financial risks. Changes in climate policies, new technologies and growing physical risks will prompt a reassessment of the value of virtually every financial asset. Firms that align their business models to the transition to a net zero world will be rewarded handsomely. Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist. The longer meaningful adjustment is delayed, the greater the disruption will be. Climate risks differ from conventional risks in several critical respects, including: Their unprecedented nature. Past experience and historical data are not good predictors of the probabilities in the future. Indeed, as the insurance industry has learned, yesterday’s tail event is becoming today’s central scenario. Their breadth and magnitude . They will affect every customer, in every sec- tor in every country. Their impact will likely be correlated, non-linear, irreversible, and subject to tipping points. They will therefore occur on a much greater scale than the other risks financial institutions are used to managing. That they are both foreseeable , in the sense that we know some combination of physical and transition risk will occur, and uncertain , in that the timing and scale is path dependent. Although the time horizons for physical risks are long - not the usual 3-5-year business planning horizon, but over decades— addressing major climate risks tomorrow requires action today . Indeed, actions over the next decade—prob- ably in the next three to five years—will be critical to determining the size and balance of future risks (1). It is self-evident that the financial system cannot diversify its way out of this risk. As the pandemic has revealed, the interconnections between the real economy and the financial system run deep. And just like Covid-19, climate change is a far-reaching, system-wide risk that affects the whole economy, from which the financial system is not immune and indeed cannot hide. As the CEO of Morgan Stanley remarked to Congress, “It’s hard to have financial stability if you don’t have a planet.” So if financial risk is to be reduced, then the underlying climate risks in the real economy must be managed. And fixing this collective action problem is a shared responsibility across financial institutions and regulators. The public and private sectors need to work together to solve it, and that means developing the necessary risk management expertise rapidly. That expertise is needed because it is challenging to assess financial risks in the normal way. As emphasised by the TCFD, it means that disclosures need to go beyond the static (what a company’s emissions are today) to the strategic (what their plans are for their emissions tomorrow). That means assessing the resilience of firms’ strategies to transition risks. This will be the principle focus of the new climate stress testing regime of central banks. At present, led by the Banque de France, the Nederlands Bank and the Bank of England, 16 central banks and supervisors will stress test their systems against different climate scenarios for a smooth transition to net zero to business-as-usual hothouse earth. Returns Financial participants increasingly recognise that sustainable investment brings enormous opportunities ranging from transforming energy to reinventing protein. While green investment products, such as green, sustainable and transition bonds are important catalysts to developing a new financial system, they will not be sufficient to finance the transition to a low carbon future. We need to mobilise mainstream finance to help support all companies in the economy to adjust business models to align with net zero pathways. Value will be driven by identifying the leaders and laggards, as well as the most important general-purpose technologies that will overcome choke points in the transition. That means having a more sophisticated understanding of how companies are working to transition from brown to green, not just where they are at a single point in time. Thus far, the approaches to doing so have been inadequate. Scores that combine E, S and G to give a single ESG metric—while worthy—are dominated by the S and the G. Carbon footprints are not forward-looking. And the impact of shareholder engagement is hard to measure. Moreover, a whole economy transition isn’t about funding only deep green activities or blacklisting dark brown ones. We need fifty shades of green to catalyse and support all companies towards net zero and be able to assess collectively whether we’re “Paris aligned.” That means investors must be able to assess the credibility of company transition plans. Transition planning is nascent and of varying quality among companies. Some have a stated net zero objective, but are yet to set out a credible strategy or tactics to achieving it. Others have fully integrated climate strategies, governance and investments. Emerging best practice transition plans include: - Defining net zero objective in terms of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions; - Outlining clear short term milestones and metrics that senior management uses to monitor progress and gauge success; - Board level governance; and - Embedding metrics in executive compensation. Schemes such as the Science Based Targets Initiative and Transition Pathway Initiative are already supporting companies to develop transition plans and certifying them when they meet appropriate thresholds. An emerging differentiator in the investment community will need to make these critical judgments. Over time, investors will not just judge company transition plans, they too shall be judged. Investors should be obliged to alignment of their portfolios with the transition and disclose their position in a readily understandable and impactful manner. There are several ways to do this. At the most basic end of the spectrum, investors could calculate the percentage of assets that have a net zero target. However, as disclosures improve in the real economy, a more sophisticated option is to calculate the degree warming potential of assets in a portfolio. A “warming potential” calculation – or Implied Temperature Rise – estimates the global temperature rise associated with emissions by the companies in an investment portfolio. For example, one of the world’s largest insurers, AXA, estimates that its assets are currently consistent with a 3.1 degree path, and it has developed an innovative climate Value-at-Risk model to measure the opportunities as well as risks from the climate-related exposures of its investments. Rating the warming potential of assets and portfolios has a number of ancillary benefits, including signaling to governments the transition path of the economy, and therefore the effectiveness of their policies; and empowering consumers to give them more choice in how to invest to support the transition. After all, with our citizens, particularly the young, demanding climate action, it is becoming essential for asset owners to disclose the extent to which their clients’ money is being invest- ed in line with their values. Conclusion A financial market in the transition to a 1.5 degree world is being built, but we need to accelerate the pace on the road to Glasgow. Now is the time for a step change to bring the reporting, risk management and return optimisation of sustainable finance into everyday financial decision making. This will require new data sets from scope 3 emissions to exposures to climate transition risk, and new financial skills from scenario analysis to assessing implied temperature warming. The common theme will be determining who is on the right and wrong side of climate history. In that way, private finance can bend the arc of that history towards climate justice. Endnote 1 UNEP Emissions Gap Report, 2019. Previous Next