Men in Women’s Clothes
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275658 , vital:55067 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12394"
- Description: The descriptive phrase that comprises my title can refer both to a pervasive comic trope and a mode of self-expression. There is a tension here, insofar as the comic trope leads us not to take cross-dressing, or drag, seriously. The first half of the comic film Some Like It Hot (1959), with its cross-gender plot and its (sophisticated but) straightforward use of the comic trope of men-in-women’s clothes, appears to fall foul of this tension and to be susceptible to criticism in this regard. However, the film rectifies itself, portraying the cross-dressing relationship which develops through the second half of the film as a potentially meaningful one for both partners. In this article, I interpret the film as inviting its viewers to adopt a (particular kind of) skeptical ironic (that is, Pyrrhonian) attitude toward gender-presentation practices. While the film in no way attempts to discourage us from participating in such practices, it does invite us—through our partiality toward the characters Osgood and Jerry/Daphne, as we follow their budding, transgressive relationship—to acknowledge that a violation of gender-presentation practices can be a meaningful feature of sincere relationships.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275658 , vital:55067 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12394"
- Description: The descriptive phrase that comprises my title can refer both to a pervasive comic trope and a mode of self-expression. There is a tension here, insofar as the comic trope leads us not to take cross-dressing, or drag, seriously. The first half of the comic film Some Like It Hot (1959), with its cross-gender plot and its (sophisticated but) straightforward use of the comic trope of men-in-women’s clothes, appears to fall foul of this tension and to be susceptible to criticism in this regard. However, the film rectifies itself, portraying the cross-dressing relationship which develops through the second half of the film as a potentially meaningful one for both partners. In this article, I interpret the film as inviting its viewers to adopt a (particular kind of) skeptical ironic (that is, Pyrrhonian) attitude toward gender-presentation practices. While the film in no way attempts to discourage us from participating in such practices, it does invite us—through our partiality toward the characters Osgood and Jerry/Daphne, as we follow their budding, transgressive relationship—to acknowledge that a violation of gender-presentation practices can be a meaningful feature of sincere relationships.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
The politics of philosophy in Africa
- Jones, Ward E, Metz, Thaddeus
- Authors: Jones, Ward E , Metz, Thaddeus
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275733 , vital:55074 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2015.1104797"
- Description: The background to the present discussion is the prevalence of political and personal criticisms in philosophical discussions about Africa. As philosophers in South Africa—both white and black—continue to philosophise seriously about Africa, responses to their work sometimes take the form of political and personal criticisms of, if not attacks on, the philosopher exploring and defending considerations about the African continent. One of us (TM) has been the target of such critiques in light of his work. Our aim in this conversation is not to diminish or deflect such critiques. On the contrary, our aim is to understand them, to make them as strong as possible, and to bring them into the cooler realm of philosophical discussion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Jones, Ward E , Metz, Thaddeus
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275733 , vital:55074 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2015.1104797"
- Description: The background to the present discussion is the prevalence of political and personal criticisms in philosophical discussions about Africa. As philosophers in South Africa—both white and black—continue to philosophise seriously about Africa, responses to their work sometimes take the form of political and personal criticisms of, if not attacks on, the philosopher exploring and defending considerations about the African continent. One of us (TM) has been the target of such critiques in light of his work. Our aim in this conversation is not to diminish or deflect such critiques. On the contrary, our aim is to understand them, to make them as strong as possible, and to bring them into the cooler realm of philosophical discussion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Venerating death
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275749 , vital:55076 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2015.1014540"
- Description: In this paper, I am concerned with elucidating and expanding our attitudes toward our own death. As it is, our common attitudes toward our death are the following: we fear our premature death, and we dread our inevitable death. These attitudes are rational, but I want to argue that our attitudes toward death should be more complicated than this. A condition upon our value, our preciousness, as creatures is that we are vulnerable, and our vulnerability is, at bottom, a vulnerability to death. A corollary of this is that we could not be loved, either by ourselves or by others, for one cannot love—be concerned for—a being invulnerable to death. As a consequence, death plays a deep and abiding role in our value systems. Our susceptibility to premature and inevitable death is a condition upon our being valuable creatures and, in turn, it is a condition upon our being loved. Given the high value that we place on being valuable creatures who deserve love, we should equally place a high value on the constitutive conditions for being precious and loved. If, as I suggest, one of these conditions is that we will die, we should see our deaths not simply as something to fear or dread, but as something of great importance in our lives. Our deaths should be treated with awe, respect, and even praise.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275749 , vital:55076 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2015.1014540"
- Description: In this paper, I am concerned with elucidating and expanding our attitudes toward our own death. As it is, our common attitudes toward our death are the following: we fear our premature death, and we dread our inevitable death. These attitudes are rational, but I want to argue that our attitudes toward death should be more complicated than this. A condition upon our value, our preciousness, as creatures is that we are vulnerable, and our vulnerability is, at bottom, a vulnerability to death. A corollary of this is that we could not be loved, either by ourselves or by others, for one cannot love—be concerned for—a being invulnerable to death. As a consequence, death plays a deep and abiding role in our value systems. Our susceptibility to premature and inevitable death is a condition upon our being valuable creatures and, in turn, it is a condition upon our being loved. Given the high value that we place on being valuable creatures who deserve love, we should equally place a high value on the constitutive conditions for being precious and loved. If, as I suggest, one of these conditions is that we will die, we should see our deaths not simply as something to fear or dread, but as something of great importance in our lives. Our deaths should be treated with awe, respect, and even praise.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Wisdom as an aim of higher education
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275765 , vital:55077 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9443-z"
- Description: A central concern of theoretical speculation about education is the kind of epistemic states that education can and should aim to achieve. One such epistemic state, long neglected in both education theory and philosophy, is wisdom. Might wisdom be something that educators should aim for? And might it be something that their students can achieve? My answer will be a qualified yes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275765 , vital:55077 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9443-z"
- Description: A central concern of theoretical speculation about education is the kind of epistemic states that education can and should aim to achieve. One such epistemic state, long neglected in both education theory and philosophy, is wisdom. Might wisdom be something that educators should aim for? And might it be something that their students can achieve? My answer will be a qualified yes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Seeing Fictions in Film
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275711 , vital:55072 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2013.818044"
- Description: Although its subtitle refers to an ‘epistemology of movies’, the claim at the heart of George M. Wilson’s dense and penetrating book is a bit of sophisticated phenomenology concerning our experience of narrative fiction films [Chs 2–4]. This phenomenological claim he calls the ‘Imagined Seeing Thesis’. When we watch narrative fiction films, we imagine that we are seeing real motion picture shots of the fictional events being portrayed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275711 , vital:55072 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2013.818044"
- Description: Although its subtitle refers to an ‘epistemology of movies’, the claim at the heart of George M. Wilson’s dense and penetrating book is a bit of sophisticated phenomenology concerning our experience of narrative fiction films [Chs 2–4]. This phenomenological claim he calls the ‘Imagined Seeing Thesis’. When we watch narrative fiction films, we imagine that we are seeing real motion picture shots of the fictional events being portrayed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
A lover’s shame
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275692 , vital:55071 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-012-9356-5"
- Description: Shame is one of the more painful consequences of loving someone; my beloved’s doing something immoral can cause me to be ashamed of her. The guiding thought behind this paper is that explaining this phenomenon can tell us something about what it means to love. The phenomenon of beloved-induced shame has been largely neglected by philosophers working on shame, most of whom conceive of shame as being a reflexive attitude. Bennett Helm has recently suggested that in order to account for beloved-induced shame, we should deny the reflexivity of shame. After arguing that Helm’s account is inadequate, I proceed to develop an account of beloved-induced shame that rightly preserves its reflexivity. A familiar feature of love is that it involves an evaluative dependence; when I love someone, my well-being depends upon her life’s going well. I argue that loving someone also involves a persistent tendency to believe that her life is going well, in the sense that she is a good person, that she is not prone to wickedness. Lovers are inclined, more strongly than they otherwise would be, to give their beloveds the moral benefit of the doubt. These two features of loving—an evaluative dependence and a persistent tendency to believe in the beloved’s moral goodness—provide the conditions for a lover to experience shame when he discovers that his beloved has morally transgressed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275692 , vital:55071 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-012-9356-5"
- Description: Shame is one of the more painful consequences of loving someone; my beloved’s doing something immoral can cause me to be ashamed of her. The guiding thought behind this paper is that explaining this phenomenon can tell us something about what it means to love. The phenomenon of beloved-induced shame has been largely neglected by philosophers working on shame, most of whom conceive of shame as being a reflexive attitude. Bennett Helm has recently suggested that in order to account for beloved-induced shame, we should deny the reflexivity of shame. After arguing that Helm’s account is inadequate, I proceed to develop an account of beloved-induced shame that rightly preserves its reflexivity. A familiar feature of love is that it involves an evaluative dependence; when I love someone, my well-being depends upon her life’s going well. I argue that loving someone also involves a persistent tendency to believe that her life is going well, in the sense that she is a good person, that she is not prone to wickedness. Lovers are inclined, more strongly than they otherwise would be, to give their beloveds the moral benefit of the doubt. These two features of loving—an evaluative dependence and a persistent tendency to believe in the beloved’s moral goodness—provide the conditions for a lover to experience shame when he discovers that his beloved has morally transgressed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
Higher education, academic communities, and the intellectual virtues
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275647 , vital:55066 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12005"
- Description: Because higher education brings members of academic communities in direct contact with students, the reflective higher education student is in an excellent position for developing two important intellectual virtues: confidence and humility. However, academic communities differ as to whether their members reach consensus, and their teaching practices reflect this difference. In this essay, Ward Jones argues that both consensus-reaching and non-consensus-reaching communities can encourage the development of intellectual confidence and humility in their students, although each will do so in very different ways.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275647 , vital:55066 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12005"
- Description: Because higher education brings members of academic communities in direct contact with students, the reflective higher education student is in an excellent position for developing two important intellectual virtues: confidence and humility. However, academic communities differ as to whether their members reach consensus, and their teaching practices reflect this difference. In this essay, Ward Jones argues that both consensus-reaching and non-consensus-reaching communities can encourage the development of intellectual confidence and humility in their students, although each will do so in very different ways.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
The art of dying
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275722 , vital:55073 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2012.743217"
- Description: In this paper, I explore what Jean Améry calls the ‘aesthetic view of death’. I address the following three questions. To what extent, and how, do we take an aesthetic view of death? Why do we take an aesthetic view of death? Third, for those whose deaths are impending and have some choice over how they die—most prominently the elderly and the terminally ill—what would it mean for them to take an aesthetic view of their own impending deaths, and, in particular, what would it mean for them to act in the light of such a view?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275722 , vital:55073 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2012.743217"
- Description: In this paper, I explore what Jean Améry calls the ‘aesthetic view of death’. I address the following three questions. To what extent, and how, do we take an aesthetic view of death? Why do we take an aesthetic view of death? Third, for those whose deaths are impending and have some choice over how they die—most prominently the elderly and the terminally ill—what would it mean for them to take an aesthetic view of their own impending deaths, and, in particular, what would it mean for them to act in the light of such a view?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
Being moved by a way the world is not
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275631 , vital:55064 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9522-z"
- Description: At the end of Lecture 3 of The Empirical Stance, Bas van Fraassen suggests that we see the change of view involved in scientific revolutions as being, at least in part, emotional. In this paper, I explore one plausible way of cashing out this suggestion. Someone’s emotional approval of a description of the world, I argue, thereby shows that she takes herself to have reason to take that description seriously. This is true even if she is convinced—as a scientific community is when it considers alternative theories—that this description is false, that it is not the way the world is.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275631 , vital:55064 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9522-z"
- Description: At the end of Lecture 3 of The Empirical Stance, Bas van Fraassen suggests that we see the change of view involved in scientific revolutions as being, at least in part, emotional. In this paper, I explore one plausible way of cashing out this suggestion. Someone’s emotional approval of a description of the world, I argue, thereby shows that she takes herself to have reason to take that description seriously. This is true even if she is convinced—as a scientific community is when it considers alternative theories—that this description is false, that it is not the way the world is.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
Elizabeth Costello and the Biography of the Moral Philosopher
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275635 , vital:55065 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2011.01462.x"
- Description: Imagine someone who informs you that her conversion to vegetarianism began when she read Charlotte's Web or viewed the film Babe. Both stories invite the reader to celebrate the events surrounding a pig being saved from the butcher. What kind of role would her spectatorship of this book or film have played in her conversion? It is perhaps improbable to suspect that she would have undergone this kind of extreme moral conversion solely on the basis of her engagement with one of these fictions; perhaps more likely is the scenario in which her engagement was only one part of a lengthy process of her moral change of mind. In any event, it is certainly possible that our imagined vegetarian would see her encounter with Charlotte's Web or Babe as playing a justificatory role in her conversion. In looking back at her conversion, she might say something like this: “I know that I was young and impressionable, but the way in which the book (or film) made me feel about its characters moved me to further reflect upon animals and the animal industry, and I now realize that it was right to do so.” On her own view, at least, her spectatorship motivated and warranted her taking the further steps that ultimately led to her conversion. If she is right, then fictional narratives can possess—to at least some degree—what Raimond Gaita refers to as an ethical “authority.”
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275635 , vital:55065 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2011.01462.x"
- Description: Imagine someone who informs you that her conversion to vegetarianism began when she read Charlotte's Web or viewed the film Babe. Both stories invite the reader to celebrate the events surrounding a pig being saved from the butcher. What kind of role would her spectatorship of this book or film have played in her conversion? It is perhaps improbable to suspect that she would have undergone this kind of extreme moral conversion solely on the basis of her engagement with one of these fictions; perhaps more likely is the scenario in which her engagement was only one part of a lengthy process of her moral change of mind. In any event, it is certainly possible that our imagined vegetarian would see her encounter with Charlotte's Web or Babe as playing a justificatory role in her conversion. In looking back at her conversion, she might say something like this: “I know that I was young and impressionable, but the way in which the book (or film) made me feel about its characters moved me to further reflect upon animals and the animal industry, and I now realize that it was right to do so.” On her own view, at least, her spectatorship motivated and warranted her taking the further steps that ultimately led to her conversion. If she is right, then fictional narratives can possess—to at least some degree—what Raimond Gaita refers to as an ethical “authority.”
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
Art and Ethical Criticism, edited by Garry L. Hagberg
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275612 , vital:55063 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzq098"
- Description: Book Review: If there is a norm that a book’s title should give a reliable indication of its contents, Art and Ethical Criticism does not quite meet it. By my judgement, only seven of its twelve essays concern either the ethical criticism of art or the criticism of ethical positions within artworks.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275612 , vital:55063 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzq098"
- Description: Book Review: If there is a norm that a book’s title should give a reliable indication of its contents, Art and Ethical Criticism does not quite meet it. By my judgement, only seven of its twelve essays concern either the ethical criticism of art or the criticism of ethical positions within artworks.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
Philosophers and the Poor
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275671 , vital:55068 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2010.5712506"
- Description: This is a programmatic paper, calling for the renewal andmodernisation of the therapeutic approach to philosophy found inEpicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics; and, in particular, for an applicationof the therapeutic approach to the life of poverty. The general assump-tion behind a therapeutic approach to philosophy is that it is possiblefor someone to be exposed to philosophical work which leads her toan improved understanding of herself and her situation, and for herlife to be improved by this understanding. After offering a sketch ofhow, given the current nature of academic philosophy, such work willbe carried out and disseminated, I suggest three areas in which philo-sophical discourse could have a therapeutic affect on the poor.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
- Authors: Jones, Ward E
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/275671 , vital:55068 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2010.5712506"
- Description: This is a programmatic paper, calling for the renewal andmodernisation of the therapeutic approach to philosophy found inEpicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics; and, in particular, for an applicationof the therapeutic approach to the life of poverty. The general assump-tion behind a therapeutic approach to philosophy is that it is possiblefor someone to be exposed to philosophical work which leads her toan improved understanding of herself and her situation, and for herlife to be improved by this understanding. After offering a sketch ofhow, given the current nature of academic philosophy, such work willbe carried out and disseminated, I suggest three areas in which philo-sophical discourse could have a therapeutic affect on the poor.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
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