Beginning with an exemplary case study, this paper diagnoses and analyses some important strategies of evasion and factors of hindrance that are met in the teaching of medical ethics to undergraduate medical students. Some of these inhibitions are inherent to ethical theories; others are connected with the nature of medicine or cultural trends. It is argued that in order to avoid an attitude of evasion in medical ethics teaching, a philosophical theory of emotions is needed that is able (...) to clarify on a conceptual level the ethical importance of emotions. An approach is proposed with the help of the emotion theory Martha Nussbaum works out in her book Upheavals of thought. The paper ends with some practical recommendations. (shrink)

Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued throughout with the (...) author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture. "West... may well be the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our generation."—The Nation "_The American Evasion of Philosophy_ is a highly intelligent and provocative book. Cornel West gives us illuminating readings of the political thought of Emerson and James; provides a penetrating critical assessment of Dewey, his central figure; and offers a brilliant interpretation—appreciative yet far from uncritical—of the contemporary philosopher and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty.... What shines through, throughout the work, is West's firm commitment to a radical vision of a philosophic discourse as inextricably linked to cultural criticism and political engagement."—Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Wisconsin Project on American Writers Frank Lentricchia, General Editor. (shrink)

The artwork from Bruno Bettelheim's Empty Fortress supplies a model of resistance to depiction. Little Joey, an autistic child whose identity Bettelheim likely forged, was an autonomous social agent (despite his purposeful evasion of representation). He contested for authorship of "autistic identity" decades before the neurodiversity movement began.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Social Evasion and Aristocratic Manners in Cicero’s De OratoreJon HallThe importance of Cicero’s De oratore as a source for Roman aristocratic manners has long been recognized. In particular, the participants in the dialogue have often been regarded as providing a model of the sophisticated ideal of humanitas and its associated qualities. 1 The aim of the present paper is likewise to examine Cicero’s portrayal of Roman manners, but (...) from a rather different point of view. The traditional emphasis on humanitas has one important shortcoming: it encourages us to view the characters as idealized, and consequently rather remote from the social realities of Cicero’s day. In what follows, I would like to suggest that De oratore, despite the element of idealization that is undeniably present, also depicts many of the practical problems of everyday aristocratic interaction with which Cicero himself was well acquainted. And, moreover, that in his depiction of these problems, Cicero successfully captures the real flavor of Roman manners. Such an approach to the work helps to shed light both on the intricacies of Roman behavior and on Cicero’s artistic achievement in the dialogue.The method adopted in the following discussion is a simple but hopefully enlightening one. We shall begin with Cicero’s portrayal of social manners in several scenes from De oratore itself, and then move on to consider how these fictional episodes compare with certain real-life situations that come to light in his correspondence. The similarities that arise will demonstrate that his literary portrayal in the dialogue is much more than an idealized fiction.The Theme of Evasion in De OratoreThe main focus of our discussion is the theme of evasion that runs throughout the first two books of De oratore. On repeated occasions L. Crassus is depicted as trying to sidestep the suggestion that he take part in a disputatio on the subject of oratory. The more his guests at Tusculum [End Page 95] urge him to speak, the more determinedly, it seems, he tries to evade the obligation. Indeed, there are some nine conversational exchanges where such attempts at evasion arise. On several occasions in Book 1 Scaevola, Sulpicius and Cotta have to cajole him to make some contribution (1.96–107, 1.133–34, 1.160–65, 1.205–7), while in Book 2 Antonius and Catulus repeatedly attempt the same task (2.13–27, 2.121–28, 2.233–34, 2.350–51, 2.361–67). 2This theme reveals much about Roman attitudes to the evasion and imposition of social obligations. The central place in Roman life of such obligations (or officia) has of course been much discussed, but surprisingly little has been said about how they were invoked or avoided. 3 The issue at stake in De oratore is hardly one of high ethical importance. Nevertheless, it involves complex social expectations. The great advantage of De oratore over non-dramatic treatises such as De officiis is that its depiction of Roman aristocrats in conversation offers direct evidence for the strategies that such men developed in order to ease the tensions that inevitably arise in social interaction.Before we explore this aspect of the theme, however, it is important to note that Cicero has several reasons for portraying Crassus as reluctant to take part in the discussion. One aim, as the most recent commentators astutely note, is to counteract the conventional Roman suspicion of philosophical debate. 4 Since such discourses were regarded as typically Greek, Crassus’ reluctance is intended to distinguish him from the more loquacious, tongue-wagging Greekling. There is a certain sleight of hand in all this, of course. Cicero ultimately intends for Crassus to embark in Book 3 upon an extensive and sophisticated analysis of oratorical style, including an emphatic plea for a synthesis of oratory and philosophy. But the character’s initial resistance goes some way to disarming the cultural prejudices of the Roman reader. In what seems to have been the Latin language’s first literary dialogue, Cicero wants to [End Page 96] suggest that Roman aristocrats do not engage in earnest theoretical discussion in the same way as the Greeks. 5Crassus’ evasion also functions as... (shrink)

In a Cournot duopoly with indirect tax evasion, this paper counter-intuitively shows that, in the presence of positive competitive wages, a higher indirect taxation may increase expected profits. This result is likely to occur if the market size (or alternatively, if the cost pressure exerted by wages) is adequately large and the detection probability is not too high, and it is equivalent irrespective of firms optimally choosing either the tax base to disclose to the tax authority or the amount (...) of evasion tout-court. (shrink)

We present an algorithm that can anticipate tax evasion by modeling the co-evolution of tax schemes with auditing policies. Malicious tax non-compliance, or evasion, accounts for billions of lost revenue each year. Unfortunately when tax administrators change the tax laws or auditing procedures to eliminate known fraudulent schemes another potentially more profitable scheme takes it place. Modeling both the tax schemes and auditing policies within a single framework can therefore provide major advantages. In particular we can explore the (...) likely forms of tax schemes in response to changes in audit policies. This can serve as an early warning system to help focus enforcement efforts. In addition, the audit policies can be fine tuned to help improve tax scheme detection. We demonstrate our approach using the iBOB tax scheme and show it can capture the co-evolution between tax evasion and audit policy. Our experiments shows the expected oscillatory behavior of a biological co-evolving system. (shrink)

In the fight against racism, philosophy has to interrogate caste in its own histories and current decolonial consensus. Caste has been evading its interrogation as the oldest race theory and racist practice, which continue to oppress the lower-caste peoples who constitute the majority population of the Indian subcontinent. Caste and race are species of the hypophysics of man, which consecrates scaled intrinsic value in human nature through the notion of “being born as” by “being born to.” They are analogues in (...) having the same denigrate-dominate function of exploiting by including as born inferior. However, caste and race are also homologues since the hypophysics of caste has been at the origins of the hypophysics of race from at least the eighteenth century, culminating in the “Aryan doctrine” of the Nazis, now being revived. Caste was the empirical, conceptual, and textual resource for Europeans as it showed that large groups could be dominated as well as excluded through the self-designated superiority, supplied by the Brahminical texts, of the oppressing group. Rather than a colonial construct, caste is the oldest racism, which in colonial times devised new calypsologies—ways to mask itself against rising anticaste thought and politics. Postcolonial and subaltern theories disguise caste’s racism as “religion,” “culture,” and subaltern subjectivity, while some sociologists have denigrated Dalit scholarship as unacademic and emotional. The homologies of caste are still dangerously regnant today. (shrink)

Using an economic bargaining game, we tested for the existence of two phenomena related to social norms, namely norm manipulation – the selection of an interpretation of the norm that best suits an individual – and norm evasion – the deliberate, private violation of a social norm. We found that the manipulation of a norm of fairness was characterized by a self-serving bias in beliefs about what constituted normatively acceptable behaviour, so that an individual who made an uneven bargaining (...) offer not only genuinely believed it was fair, but also believed that recipients found it fair, even though recipients of the offer considered it to be unfair. In contrast, norm evasion operated as a highly explicit process. When they could do so without the recipient's knowledge, individuals made uneven offers despite knowing that their behaviour was unfair. (shrink)

In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud rejects the notion of a biologically determined connection of instinct to object, a position which helps him avoid the designation of all variations from heterosexuality as either “degenerate” or “pathological.” However, the gender roles and relations commonly attributed to heterosexuality are already implicit in his understanding of sexual instinct and aim. Consequently, even variations from the normal sexual object and aim exemplify, on his interpretation, the clichéd hierarchical opposition of femininity and (...) masculinity. Freud’s theory of sexuality thus implies that the erotic bond is inevitably one of domination, and that the only possible human relation is one of subject to object, activity to passivity, whole to part, and owner to property. My primary intention in this paper is to explore, in Freud’s analysis of fetishism, traces of an alternate possibility to oppositional hierarchical gender roles and the negative forms of social relation that rely upon them. While Freud---in keeping with common opinion---characterizes sexual fetishism as a distinctly masculine phenomenon, the text also supports a more interesting interpretation: that the non-pathological fetishist evades the construction of gender in terms of sexual roles and that, consequently, fetishism can serve as a critique of Freud’s masculine model of sexual instinct and relation. (shrink)

In 1944, Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, wrote a doctoral dissertation titled The Moral Obligation of Paying Just Taxes. His dissertation summarized and analyzed 500 years of theological and philosophical debate on this topic, much of which took place in Latin. Since Crowe’s dissertation, not much has been written on the topic of tax evasion from an ethical perspective, with a few exceptions. In 1998 and 1999, a few articles were published on the ethics of tax evasion in (...) the Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy. An edited book on this topic was published in 1998. The present paper summarizes, updates and expands on Crowe’s work and the other more recent work that has been published on this topic. Three basic views on the ethics of tax evasion have emerged over the centuries. This article presents and critiques those three views and raises some questions about points that have not yet been explored in the literature. (shrink)

Say that a function π:n<ω→n (henceforth called a predictor) k-constantly predicts a real xnω if for almost all intervals I of length k, there is iI such that x(i)=π(x↾i). We study the k-constant prediction number vnconst(k), that is, the size of the least family of predictors needed to k-constantly predict all reals, for different values of n and k, and investigate their relationship.

In his contribution to Cheryl Misak's New Pragmatists volume, David Bakhurst considers the "prospect of a fruitful alliance between [ethical] particularism and pragmatism." 1 In an attempt to show that members of the two camps can "profit from critical engagement with each other's works" (124), he considers how pragmatists might help resolve three outstanding problems for ethical particularists. Unfortunately, his generosity outpaces his imagination, and he does not really find a great deal that pragmatists can contribute. So Bakhurst's potential alliance (...) ends up being a case of convergent evolution. He finds that he and his fellow particularists now occupy positions—positions against, among other .. (shrink)

The ethics of tax evasion has been discussed sporadically in the theological and philosophical literature for at least 500 years. Martin Crowe wrote a doctoral thesis that reviewed much of that literature in 1944. The debate revolved around about 15 issues. Over the centuries, three main views evolved on the topic. But the business ethics literature has paid scant attention to this issue, perhaps because of the belief that tax evasion is always unethical. This paper reports the results (...) of an empirical study of opinion in Utah and Florida. A survey of accounting students was conducted to determine the extent of their agreement or disagreement with the 15 main issues that Crowe (1944) identified plus three more recent issues. The arguments that have been made over the centuries to justify tax evasion were ranked to determine which arguments are strongest and which are weakest. Scores were compared between samples to determine whether the responses were significantly different. (shrink)

We show that the evasion number $\mathfrak {e}$ can be added to Cichoń’s maximum with a distinct value. More specifically, it is consistent that $\aleph _1<\operatorname {\mathrm {add}}(\mathcal {N})<\operatorname {\mathrm {cov}}(\mathcal {N})<\mathfrak {b}<\mathfrak {e}<\operatorname {\mathrm {non}}(\mathcal {M})<\operatorname {\mathrm {cov}}(\mathcal {M})<\mathfrak {d}<\operatorname {\mathrm {non}}(\mathcal {N})<\operatorname {\mathrm {cof}}(\mathcal {N})<2^{\aleph _0}$ holds.

We examine the impact of the African slave trade on corporate tax evasion in modern Africa. Using data from 28 African countries, we document that firms are more likely to evade taxes in countries that suffered a higher level of historical slave extraction. This finding is robust to an instrumental variable analysis. We further use household survey data to show that the slave trade has a long-lasting negative impact on tax compliance attitudes in the society and the quality of (...) tax enforcement institutions. Our results highlight and quantify a pronounced historical determinant of cross-country differences in corporate decisions. (shrink)

The first part of Chapter 2.21 of the Arthaśāstra deals with the activities of the Customs Superintendent, containing recommendations regarding the collection of customs duty. Scholars have encountered several difficulties in understanding the meaning and purposes of the activities described. An auction-like procedure described in the text has been analyzed by some as the normal operation of a market, with the payments to the treasury mentioned there taken as a hitherto-unknown market tax—the price of trading in the market. Other paragraphs (...) in the text describe seemingly self-contradictory trader actions. Interpretations of these actions have involved the imbuing of traders with complex psychological beliefs regarding the actions of other traders. This article proposes an economic model of the underlying market structure, which leads to a different and integrated reading of the text. In this reading, the author of the text, recognizing the incentive for importers to undervalue their goods, suggests the auction procedure and accom- panying penalty payments to elicit truthful revelation of importers’ valuations and to maximize customs levy collections. By comparing the procedure in the Arthaśāstra to modern-day regulations intended to combat tax evasion, the article provides early evidence of the use of sophisticated mechanisms to elicit truthful value revelation. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to build on the work of Riahi-Belkaoui (J Int Account Audit Tax 13: 135–143, 2004) and systematically examine on a cross-country basis, many of the key determinants of tax evasion identified by Jackson and Milliron (J Account Literat 5: 125–165, 1986). Based on data for 45 countries, the regression results show that non-economic determinants have the strongest impact on tax evasion. In particular, complexity is the most important determinant of tax evasion. (...) Other important determinants of tax evasion are education, income source, fairness and tax morale. Overall, the regression results indicate that the lower the level of complexity and the higher the level of education, services income source, fairness and tax morale, the lower is the level of tax evasion. The findings are robust to various cross-country control variables, an alternative measure of tax evasion and several interactions. (shrink)

In this study, we reconcile conflicting findings from the extant literature on the impact of tax system parameters on tax noncompliance. We argue that social norms play a role of heuristics facilitating tax payers’ response to the instrumental incentives posed by the systemic parameters, such as tax rate and penalties for evasion, and thus moderate the effect of those parameters on willingness to evade taxes. Relying on a unique survey experiment conducted in fourteen countries of Central-Eastern Europe, we demonstrate (...) two types of a conditioning effect of norms. First, the impact of tax rates on respondents’ propensity for tax evasion is moderated by the perceived norms of the society at large. In particular, an increasing tax rate lowers the probability of evasion as long as one views “most others” as honest taxpayers, which highlights the importance of equitability concerns for tax compliance decisions. In contrast, the impact of punishment is moderated by the perceived norms of one’s immediate reference group. Strong subjective compliance norms tend to effectively replace penalties as a mechanism discouraging tax evasion, suggesting that the deterrent effect of a penalty can be entirely suppressed when subjective norms are strong. These findings have important implications for the understanding of tax compliance decisions under different formal and informal regimes. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine income tax evasion in Jordan and set forth various cures for this problem.

This article begins with a review of the literature on the ethics of tax evasion and identifies the three main views that have emerged over the centuries, namely always ethical, sometimes ethical, and never or almost never ethical. It then reports on the results of a survey of HK and U.S. university business students who were asked to express their opinions on the 15 statements covering the three main views. The data are then analyzed to determine which of the (...) three viewpoints is dominant among the sample population. Although it was found that HK scores were significantly different from the U.S. scores, both HK and U.S. respondents were opposed to the view that tax evasion is always or almost always ethical. The strongest arguments justifying tax evasion were in cases where the government was corrupt, the tax system was unfair and unaffordable. The weakest arguments for justifying tax evasion were in cases where there was a selfish motive. The underlying cultural differences are further explored in hope of accounting for differing perceptions of ethics of tax evasion. Policy implications for increasing people’s awareness of ethics on tax evasion are also highlighted. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the consumer side of consumption tax evasion (CTE), a subcategory of the shadow economy. The ethical dimensions of tax evasion have been effectively captured by the existent literature on tax morale, yet it fails to address the role consumers can play in CTE. Further, there is a shortage of tax morale studies that explore ethical decision making as a process composed of multiple steps and determinants. To bridge these gaps, we turned to the consumer (...) ethics literature and Jones’ issue-contingent model of ethical decision making. We developed the conceptual model of consumer ethical decision making for CTE by incorporating four key elements from the issue-contingent model, i.e. moral recognition, moral judgement, moral intention and moral intensity, while personal moral philosophies were introduced as an antecedent to the consumer ethical decision-making process. The study was conducted on a sample of consumers from Slovenia, where CTE is a widespread phenomenon. The findings confirm that consumers’ recognition of CTE as a moral issue is influenced by their moral philosophy and perceptions regarding the magnitude of CTE’s consequences, their visibility, probability, and temporal immediacy. These perceptions also play an important role in determining consumers’ moral judgements and intentions regarding CTE. Moreover, through the process of moral recognition and moral judgement, consumers form intentions to participate in, or avoid CTE. The study holds important implications for public policy makers who are trying to reduce the tax gap in times of economic instability and fiscal crisis. (shrink)

This study experimentally examines how tax administration service inefficiencies in the form of tax return processing delays from paper-filed tax returns indirectly affect taxpayer tax evasion intentions through taxpayers’ psychological reactance to the delay. We further consider whether this indirect effect is different when the taxpayer willingly chooses to paper file their tax return versus when the taxpayer is forced to do so. Consistent with Psychological Reactance Theory (PRT), we find that when taxpayers receive delayed refunds, they experience psychological (...) reactance (e.g., anger and frustration with the tax administration) that increases their tax evasion intentions. Further, we find that the effect of a delayed refund on tax evasion intentions via psychological reactance is stronger for taxpayers who choose to paper file than for those who are forced to do so. Our theory and findings inform academics, policymakers, and practitioners about the importance of tax administration services and potential negative taxpayer responses, which could lead to unethical behavior, resulting in increased tax evasion and lost government revenues. Further, our findings provide new insights about PRT when decision-makers face multiple threats versus a single threat to freedom. (shrink)

The paper is based on the following two assumptions. Firstly, evasive utterances are those which are semantically irrelevant to the question they are an answer to. Secondly, they can be divided into two main categories — overt and covert.The question to be asked as regards covert evasion is: How is it possible that an evasive speaker can nevertheless count on her/his utterance being considered cooperative? The objective of this paper is to analyse the means which are used by evasive (...) speakers to pretend that their utterance does cooperatively answer the question and thereby meet its conversational demand.Semantic and pragmatic means were identified as serving the purpose of concealing evasive action. Within the former ones operation within the same topic as the questioner, and, secondly, equipping her/his evasive utterance with some formal characteristics which may indicate its relationship with the question, were listed. On a pragmatic level, the speaker may explicitly or implicitly indicate her/his willingness to answer the question: by statement or implication as well as licenses of uncooperativeness or hedging. (shrink)

While introspective methods went out of favour with the decline of Titchener’s analytic school, many important questions concern the rehabilitation of introspection in contemporary psychology. Hatfield rightly points out that introspective methods should not be confused with analytic ones, and goes on to describe their “ineliminable role” in perceptual psychology. Here I argue that certain methodological conventions within psychophysics reflect a continued uncertainty over appropriate use of subjects’ perceptual observations and the reliability of their introspective judgements. My first claim is (...) that different psychophysical methods do not rely equally on the introspective capabilities of experimental subjects. I contrast “minimally-introspective” tasks with “introspection-heavy” ones. It is only in the latter, I argue, that introspection can be said to have a non-trivial role in the subjects’ performance. My second claim is that my rough-and-ready distinction maps onto a number of important “dichotomies” in vision science. Not coincidentally, the introspection-heavy categorisation captures many of the tasks typically considered less able to yield useful information regarding the processes underlying visual sensation. (shrink)

Arguments for mandatory or compulsory vaccination must justify the coercive infringement of bodily integrity via the injection of chemicals that permanently affect a body’s inner constitution. Four arguments are considered. The allegedly libertarian argument declares unvaccinated persons a threat; accordingly, vaccination could take the form of justifiable defence of self and others. This argument conflates material and statistical threats. The harsh coercive measures permissible in defence against the former are not permissible in prevention of the latter. The argument from tax (...) evasion claims that people can be permissibly coerced into bearing their fair financial burdens of community life and likens this to sharing burdens in the face of a viral threat. The argument fails to demonstrate that vaccination would be fair, permissible in spite of potential lethal side-effects, and sufficiently similar to taxation despite the categorical difference between temporary deprivation of money and permanent deprivation of one’s original inner bodily constitution. The argument from ‘social liberty’ claims that the loss of freedom due to mandatory vaccination is only apparent, namely outweighed by corresponding gains in freedom. This argument conflates freedom as the absence of coercion with freedom as the presence of options for action. It fails to give the former its due weight and to demonstrate that persons may be coerced into increasing the options of others. The argument from the priority of life elevates the protection of life to an absolute value. This is unwarranted and leads to counterintuitive implications. Without better arguments, mandatory vaccination must be rejected. (shrink)

While I agree with the ethical analysis presented by the Brussels Collaboration on Bodily Integrity regarding the prohibition of non-voluntary surgical interventions on children “categorized as fem...

This paper focuses specifically on how religions shape attitudes towards ethics of tax evasion. Firstly, the paper begins with an overview of the four views on the ethics of tax evasion that have emerged over the centuries, then goes on to review some of the theoretical and empirical literature on the subject. The empirical part of the study examines attitudes toward tax evasion in 57 countries from the perspectives of six religions using the data from Wave 6 (...) of the World Values Survey. The sample population is more than 52,000. More than a dozen demographic variables were examined. The results study found that attitude toward cheating on taxes does differ by religion. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that inconsistencies across repeated interviews do not indicate deception because liars deliberately tend to repeat the same story. However, when a strategic interview approach that makes it difficult for liars to use the repeat strategy is used, both consistency and evasive answers differ significantly between truth tellers and liars, and statistical software (binary logistic regression analyses) can reach high classification rates (Masip et al., 2016b ). Yet, if the interview procedure is to be used in applied (...) settings the decision process will be made by humans, not statistical software. To address this issue, in the current study, 475 college students (Experiment 1) and 142 police officers (Experiment 2) were instructed to code and use consistency, evasive answers, or a combination or both before judging the veracity of Masip et al.'s ( 2016b ) interview transcripts. Accuracy rates were high (60% to over 90%). Evasive answers yielded higher rates than consistency, and the combination of both these cues produced the highest accuracy rates in identifying both truthful and deceptive statements. Uninstructed participants performed fairly well (around 75% accuracy), apparently because they spontaneously used consistency and evasive answers. The pattern of results was the same among students, all officers, and veteran officers only, and shows that inconsistencies between interviews and evasive answers reveal deception when a strategic interview approach that hinders the repeat strategy is used. (shrink)

Economic theory and practice of developed countries have shown that the good functioning of market economies requires the existence of stable institutions that are effective in the application of legal rules as a precondition for the proper functioning of the economic and fiscal system. In the process of building a market economy in Southeast European countries, along with the sector of legal economy there coexists a large sector of shadow economy, tax evasion and high levels of corruption. Analyses made (...) by many authors and relevant national and international institutions estimate that the amount of the shadow economy, tax evasion and corruption in the analyzed countries despite a declining trend in the last decade continues to be at the level of 25-50% compared with the legal sector of the economy. The author aims through a comparative approach to analyze the level of the shadow economy, tax evasion and corruption in the economies of Southeast Europe and provides some recommendations for governments to overcome these negative phenomena. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the conceptual and moral issues raised by illegal actions in health care. The author first identifies several types of illegal action, concentrating on civil disobedience, conscientious objection or refusal, and evasive noncompliance. Then he sketches a framework for the moral justification of these types of illegal action. Finally, he applies the conceptual and normative frameworks to several major cases of illegal action in health care, such as "mercy killing" and some decisions not to treat incompetent (...) patients. Keywords: illegal actions, mercy killing, non-treatment of incompetent patients, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, evasive non-compliance, moral justification and disobedience, dissent in health care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Vice epistemology studies how character traits, attitudes, or thinking styles systematically get in the way of knowledge, while doxastic responsibility is concerned with what kinds of responses are appropriate towards agents who believe badly. This paper identifies a new connection between these two fields, arguing that our propensity to take responsibility for our doxastic failures is directly relevant for vice epistemology, and in particular, understanding the social obstacles to knowledge that epistemic vices can create. This is because responses to norm (...) violations are an important mechanism by which norms are upheld, and maintaining epistemic norms is crucial for our collective epistemic successes. This paper then identifies a new kind of vice, one which is bad precisely because of the way it undermines the epistemic norms that our blaming practices help maintain, and thus the benefits that said norms create. I call this vice epistemic evasiveness, and it concerns the attitude that one takes towards their own performance as an epistemic agent. Evasiveness is bad because it creates uncertainty about which agents are reliable, it prevents holders of this attitude from learning from their mistakes, and it signals to third parties that the norm is not being upheld, making them less likely to follow the norm. (shrink)

First published in 1935, _On Escape_ represents Emmanuel Levinas's first attempt to break with the ontological obsession of the Western tradition. In it, Levinas not only affirms the necessity of an escape from being, but also gives a meaning and a direction to it. Beginning with an analysis of need not as lack or some external limit to a self-sufficient being, but as a positive relation to our being, Levinas moves through a series of brilliant phenomenological analyses of such phenomena (...) as pleasure, shame, and nausea in order to show a fundamental insufficiency in the human condition. In his critical introduction and annotation, Jacques Rolland places _On Escape_ in its historical and intellectual context, and also within the context of Levinas's entire oeuvre, explaining Levinas's complicated relation to Heidegger, and underscoring the way Levinas's analysis of "being riveted," of the need for escape, is a meditation on the body. (shrink)

Guided by the concept of the grey zone, this article explores the role of officially published Slovak literature during the normalization period of state socialism as a site of negotiated critique. It examines how literary works navigated blurred boundaries between ideological conformity and cultural dissent. Rather than directly opposing the regime, many authors strategically adapted or manipulated state-approved cultural codes to challenge official discourse from within. Focusing on late socialist cultural production in Czechoslovakia, the article revisits works by Ján Fekete, (...) Rudolf Sloboda, and Peter Pišťanek, considering their subversive potential. Through close readings, it traces a shift from collective engagement to existential introspection, ecological anxiety, and grotesque parody. These narratives embed civilizational and social critique through subversive irony, emotional dissonance, and ambiguity – tools for expressing discontent while avoiding open resistance. Integrating discourse theory and literary sociology, the study proposes a non-binary model of literary history under authoritarianism. Grey zone literature emerges both as a strategy of cultural survival and a subtle force eroding the socialist cultural canon, with comparative relevance for understanding intellectual life under late socialism. (shrink)

In his later work, Foucault was more skeptical of theory than he was of norms. His apparent evasion of normative theory was not meant to suggest, as some interpreters have thought, that norm ative theory is useless or oppressive, but rather that it is fragile and uncertain, that it depends for its practical effect on something essen tially untheorizable: character, or what Foucault alternately called 'ethos' and 'philosophical life'. This conception of ethos suggests a way to make sense of (...) Foucault's 'cryptonormativism' - his apparent tendency to rely tacitly on norms that he publicly rejected - and sheds light on his views on authorship and the purpose of genealogy. Key Words: enlightenment • ethics • Foucault • genealogy • particularism. (shrink)

From the first days of conscription, physicians have declared their opposition to unjust wars by using their good offices to aid draft evaders.

This paper reconsiders the role of punishment in theories of civil disobedience through three contributions. First, it shows that accepting punishment, as commonly understood, is neither essential to defining civil disobedience nor key to its success. Philosophical discussions have overlooked the complex path of civil disobedience through the political-legal system, where most cases never reach trial and outcomes depend heavily on state discretion. Second, it introduces “non-evasion,” a sequential set of civility-based demands that arise as disobedient agents confront law (...) enforcement and courts: publicly risking arrest, submitting to arrest, cooperating with jail proceedings, appearing in court when summoned, respecting courtroom decorum, and abiding by judicial decisions. This framework clarifies what civility plausibly requires at each stage of interaction with the state. Third, it identifies conditions under which civility’s moral weight is lifted and defends “evasion”—deliberate departures from non-evasion—as sometimes morally permissible, albeit uncivil. The paper explores both instrumental and intrinsic grounds for evasion, highlighting its epistemic communicative, affective-expressive, and transformative-prefigurative value. (shrink)