Does Marx have a coherent ethical vision? How does that square with his sometimes-scathing dismissal of morality? What does his critique of capital have to do with ethics? Why is the proletariat the revolutionary class? What is the normative importance of that claim? In Marx’s Ethical Vision (Oxford University Press, 2024), Vanessa Wills provides a careful reconstruction of Marx’s understanding of human nature and the possibility of creating a world best suited to our flourishing. Working from Marx’s earliest texts through his last, Wills shows not only how Marx builds his understanding from material conditions in their historical specificity, but also how doing so can help guide efforts to change the world in ways that support individual growth, self-expression, and development as a universally shared project. Wills consistently argues against philosophical projects that try to salvage Marx’s valuable insights stripped of his method. Wills shows that the method by which Marx sought to understand the world and human nature as a force within it is integral to understanding his vision for what ought to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic has been both hugely influential in the environmental conservation movement – and also often misinterpreted. In The Land is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millenium (University of Chicago Press), Roberta Millstein aims to set the record straight. Millstein, who is professor emerit of philosophy at the University of California – Davis, offers interpretations of Leopold’s key concepts of the “land community” based in complex webs of causal interactions and “land health” as an ability of the land community to renew itself over time. She provides a comprehensive overview of Leopold’s prescient ideas regarding the expansion of humanity’s scope of moral concern to the land communities to which we belong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

We commonly think of democracy as a social order governed by the people’s collective will. Given the size of the modern states, this picture is typically adjusted to say that democracy is a system of representative government, where elected officials are tasked with governing in ways that reflect the collective will of their constituents.Although it is familiar, this way of depicting democracy invites difficulties. The concept of a collective will is notoriously difficult to nail down. And, moreover, the idea that modern elections reveal or express such a will remains dubious. Accordingly, a good deal of democratic theory aims to fill in the missing details regarding the collective will and its representation.In The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy (Oxford University Press 2024), Samuel Bagg takes a different tack by proposing a vision of democracy where the central aim is to protect public power from capture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

The open-access edited volume Philosophies of Appropriated Religions: Perspectives from Southeast Asia (Springer, 2023) collects philosophical approaches to Southeast Asian traditions of philosophy and religion. The editors, Soraj Hongladarom, Jeremiah Joven Joaquin, and Frank J. Hoffman, have produced a volume that treats traditional topics in philosophy of religion, such as the problem of evil and afterlife, as well as religious identity, beliefs, practices, and diversity. Contributions vary in methodology; some focus on empirical data and modern culture, while others engage with philosophical texts. Essays focus on a range of religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and indigenous practices. Despite this variety, the volume's editors present the collection as having a kind of unity, both in the specificity of how Southeast Asia "appropriates" religions and the philosophical nature of the essays included. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Wendy Salkin, an author and philosopher, dives into the ethics of informal political representation. She discusses how celebrities and public figures often claim to speak for others, raising intriguing ethical questions. Salkin explores the historical significance and responsibilities tied to informal representatives, referencing key moments like the 1895 Cotton States Exposition. She also examines the importance of audience conferral and the challenges marginalized groups face in representation, emphasizing the complexity of identity and advocacy.

Devonya N. Havis, a philosopher focused on Black American cultural practices, challenges traditional academic philosophy's narrow scope. She explores how everyday experiences and art from figures like Thelonious Monk and Nina Simone enrich philosophical thought. Havis emphasizes the need to recognize marginalized voices, including those in literature like Ellison's 'Invisible Man.' She advocates for educational methods that reflect diverse realities, promoting a more inclusive approach to philosophical inquiry rooted in Black vernacular traditions.

It was an astounding discovery in the early 1980's that the same genetic sequence, the homeobox, controlled the development of basic body plans across the animal kingdom, whether the result was a flatworm, an octopus, a mouse, or a human. This discovery of the conservation of a key developmental mechanism across phyla and vast stretches of evolutionary time helped launch the interdisciplinary field of evolutionary developmental biology, or Evo-Devo. In Evolution and Development: Conceptual issues (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Alan Love explains and explores Evo-Devo and the philosophical problems that arise in its pursuit. Love, who is professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, considers such issues as the type of scientific unity that arises from focusing on problem agendas rather than theory, the problem of determining when variation in traits gives rise to a novel trait, and how the identity of features at various levels of biological organization can be explained by particular causal mechanisms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Oliver Traldi, an author and scholar focused on political beliefs and philosophy, delves into the burgeoning field of political epistemology. He discusses the influence of values like misinformation and propaganda on political thought. Traldi explores how political affiliations affect rational decision-making, introducing the notion of identity protective cognition. He also analyzes the relationship between political beliefs and conspiracy theories, revealing their role in societal polarization. His insights challenge listeners to rethink the dynamics of belief and political action.

An influential eighth-century Buddhist text, Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, or Guide to the Practices of Awakening, how to become a supremely virtuous person, a bodhisattva who desires to end the suffering of all sentient beings. Stephen Harris’s Buddhist Ethics and the Bodhisattva Path: Śāntideva on Virtue and Well-Being (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024) is a study of the Guide. It articulates Śāntideva’s moral psychology and virtue theory in chapter-length treatments of four central virtues: generosity, patience, compassion, and wisdom. According to Harris, Śāntideva thinks these virtues benefit human persons, and thus the radically altruistic bodhisattva path is also a self-interested one. Harris’s book also explores how this ethical project coheres with the emptiness of all things, the famous Madhyamaka denial of intrinsic nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

There's a lot of talk these days about the existential risk that artificial intelligence poses to humanity -- that somehow the AIs will rise up and destroy us or become our overlords. In The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford UP), Shannon Vallor argues that the actual, and very alarming, existential risk of AI that we face right now is quite different. Because some AI technologies, such as ChatGPT or other large language models, can closely mimic the outputs of an understanding mind without having actual understanding, the technology can encourage us to surrender the activities of thinking and reasoning. This poses the risk of diminishing our ability to respond to challenges and to imagine and bring about different futures. In her compelling book, Vallor, who holds the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh Futures Institute, critically examines AI Doomers and Long-termism, the nature of AI in relation to human intelligence, and the technology industry's hand in diverting our attention from the serious risks we face. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy