Ethics

This essay argues, through various personal anecodotes, for a university in which our work and lives would turn away from impersonal professionalism and more towards a praxis where we would recognize better, as Brantley Bryant has written, that our "very strength, our very expertise, comes from darkness, indeterminacy, unmarketably disastrous historical realities, hanging, drowning, plague, ruin," and where we would see better "with our flawed vision, be happy with less than enough, and work darkly and beautifully at the bottom of our game." The essay argues further that we need to understand better how divergent desires for divergent objects structure what we do within the university, and we should work harder to practice a non-possessive humanities -- a diffcult love -- that allows more room for others to want what we do not necessarily also want.

This paper argues that we can comparatively benefit and harm someone by creating her. First I defend a conception of comparative benefit and harm that asks which of the options available to the agent are better for the patient. Second I argue that we can hold that existing can be better for the patient than never having existed without inviting unpalatable normative implications or doing violence to our understanding of the betterness relation. Third I show that the comparison between the patient's existence and her non-existence cannot be a wellbeing comparison. Still, I argue, the comparison is intelligible. I conclude that if I create a child and it has a good life, this is better for the child and I benefit it. If I do not create the child, I neither harm nor benefit it. I should thus be praised if I create it, but not reprimanded if I don't.

Since February 2010, the issue of Users of Metal Detectors (UMDs) has been a hot topic in France. If the issue unleashed passions, although this has not really been reflected in the French media, a question is implicitly linked to the subject: apart from preventing the very real danger of new archaeological sites being destroyed, will this spell the end of amateur archaeology? With the creation of the National Archaeological Excavations Association (INRAP) in 1973, which became a public service called the National Institute for Preventative Archaeological Research in 2002, coupled with the growth of private companies in archaeology, the professionalisation of French archaeology has significantly changed the relationship between this profession and amateur archaeologists. This evolution now underlines the ambiguous position of the French state, which, on the one hand, supports the contributions of civil society to the profession, yet on the other hand, is still very suspicious about organisations that are not directly dependent upon the state. After a quick review of relevant legislation and the evolution of French archaeology, we will present a profile of the UMDs, their impact on archaeology and the reactions to this subject by professionals as well as the state, communities and citizens. Then, we will broaden the issue by asking if UMDs represent the only human danger for archaeology. Finally, we will discuss potential solutions to the problem of looting while still encouraging the involvement and recognition of amateur archaeologists and citizens committed to the protection of French heritage.

Parfit suggests that Rawls's separateness of persons argument and his objection to balancing have less force due to the fact that the identity relation fails to hold between myself at one time and my "self" at another time. Parfit claims that the identity relation should be replaced by Relation R because it can account for all that matters regarding morality without the metaphysical problems associated with identity. I argue that if Relation R is adequate for an account of survival, meaning psychological continuity, then it can tell us when the survival relation obtains between two person-stages and when it does not. In short, although survival is a matter of degree, the question of whether or not there is a relationship of survival between two person-stages is not itself a matter of degree. If Relation R can determine when the survival relation obtains and when it does not, then it can serve as a principle for individuating persons. And individuation is all we need to account for the fundamental separateness of persons. If the survival relation is really as powerful as Parfit claims, then his view cannot circumvent Rawls's separateness of persons argument and his objection to balancing.