Call For Papers: Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence @thePJCV

Call for Papers

Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence (PJCV)

Special Edition on Conflict and Violence in Plato’s Philosophy

Edited by Joan-Antoine Mallet (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)

We invite contributions dealing with all facets of conflict and violence in Plato’s philosophy. A variety of philosophical perspectives are welcome, including history of philosophy, continental tradition, phenomenology, analytical philosophy, non-Western philosophy, and theology. We are also interested in approaches from other fields in relation to Platonic philosophy as history, anthropology, archeology and philology. We are looking for global analyses of conflict and violence in Plato’s work and/or particular studies focused on one or a few dialogues. The selected articles will be published by Trivent Publishing in December 2020.

Possible general topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:

●    Sources and influences of Plato’s conception of conflict and violence (Homer, Hesiod, Presocratics …)
●    Socrates, crime, conflict and violence
●    Plato and the Sophists about crime and violence
●    Plato’s politics and ethics
●    Plato’s conception of war (polemos and stasis)
●    Plato’s critical approaches of political violence
●    Plato’s views about crime and retribution
●    Plato’s view about potential way of solving conflicts
●    Plato’s conception of sacrifice
●    Violence and myths in Plato’s work
●    Plato’s metaphysics and ontology
●    Plato’s epistemology
●    Plato’s aesthetics
●    Conflict and violence in Neoplatonism
●    Influence of Plato’s legacy on philosophical interpretations of conflict and violence

Deadlines

Those interested in contributing to this issue should submit an abstract of 100–250 words to Joan-Antoine Mallet at joan.mallet@trivent-publishing.eu and Andreas Wilmes at andreas.wilmes@trivent-publishing.eu no later than April 1, 2020. Authors will be informed of acceptance by no later than May 1, 2020. Full papers should be submitted by June 15, 2020, be written in the PJCV template available on trivent-publishing.eu/pjcv.html, and have a maximum of 20 pages.

Frosio on Reimagining Digital Copyright Through the Power of Imitation: Lessons From Confucius and Plato @GCFrosio

Giancarlo Frosio, Université de Strasbourg - CEIPI; Stanford University - Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, is publishing Reimagining Digital Copyright through the Power of Imitation: Lessons from Confucius and Plato in volume 5 of the Peking University Transnational Law Journal (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

For millennia, Western and Eastern culture shared a common creative paradigm. From Confucian China, across the Hindu Kush with the Indian Mahābhārata, the Bible, the Koran and the Homeric epics, to Platonic mimēsis and Shakespeare’s “borrowed feathers,” our culture was created under a fully open regime of access to pre-existing expressions and re-use. Creativity used to be propelled by the power of imitation. However, modern policies have largely forgotten the cumulative and collaborative nature of creativity. Actually, the last three decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of intellectual property rights in sharp contrast with the open and participatory social norms governing creativity in the networked environment. Against this background, this paper discusses the reaction to traditional copyright policy and the emergence of a social movement re-imagining copyright according to a common tradition focusing on re-use, collaboration, access and cumulative creativity. This reaction builds upon copyright’s growing irrelevance in the public mind, especially among younger generations in the digital environment, because of the emergence of new economics of digital content distribution in the Internet. Along the way, the rise of the users, and the demise of traditional gatekeepers, forced a process of reconsideration of copyright’s rationale and welfare incentives. Scholarly and market alternatives to traditional copyright have been plenty, attempting to reconcile pre-modern, modern and post-modern creative paradigms. Building upon this body of research, proposals and practice, this Article will finally try to chart a roadmap for reform that reconnects Eastern and Western creative experience in light of a common past, looking for a shared future.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Hunt on The Law in Plato's Laws @radfordu

Luke William Hunt, Radford University, has published The Law in Plato's Laws: A Reading of the 'Classical Thesis' at 35 Polis 102 (2018).

Plato’s Laws include what H.L.A. Hart called the ‘classical thesis’ about the nature and role of law: the law exists to see that one leads a morally good life. This paper develops Hart’s brief remarks by providing a panorama of the classical thesis in Laws. This is done by considering two themes: (1) the extent to which Laws is paternalistic, and (2) the extent to which Laws is naturalistic. These themes are significant for a number of reasons, including because they show how Laws might be viewed as a sophisticated forerunner of natural law theory. The upshot is that Plato's metaphysical commitments about legal ontology allow him to base the truth of legal propositions on the way they relate to the truth of corresponding moral propositions.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

A New Book On Justice and Injustice

New from Routledge



The Concept of Injustice
By Eric Heinze
Published October 24th 2012 by Routledge--218 pages

The Concept of Injustice challenges traditional Western justice theory. Thinkers from Plato and Aristotle through to Kant, Hegel, Marx and Rawls have subordinated the idea of injustice to the idea of justice. Misled by the word’s etymology, political theorists have assumed injustice to be the sheer, logical opposite of justice. Heinze summons ancient and early modern texts, philosophical and literary, with special attention to Shakespeare, to argue that injustice is not primarily the negation, failure or absence of justice. It is the constant product of regimes and norms of justice. Justice is not always the cure for injustice, and is often its cause.

Philosopher Kings and Melville's Captain Vere

Rob Atkinson Jr., Florida State University College of Law, has published Averting the Captain Vere 'Veer': Billy Budd as Melville's Republican Response to Plato, as FSU College of Law Public Law Research Paper No. 539. Here is the abstract.

This article shows how Melville’s Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature’s most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato’s challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how “poets” create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic’s philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of “poetry” that Plato should willing allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law’s agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if they are to do justice. Paradoxically, the novella also shows how “poetry” can save law’s agents, particularly the more Platonic, from Captain Vere’s “veer,” a dangerous turn  from fully legal justice to false and fatal severity. 

Captain Vere has a “tragic flaw” all too common among leaders otherwise completely conscientious and competent: When faced with a range of courses - all legal, moral, and practicable - Vere invariably charts the most personally painful. Part of his “no pain, no gain” course steers him into fastidious studies that exclude both “mere” fiction and “pure” theory, ironically banishing Plato himself along with his “poets.” But Vere’s own story, with its narrator’s frequent theoretical interruptions and occasional allusions to Plato, demonstrates that the reading of just such stories may deliver leaders like him from over-harsh treatment of themselves and their most vulnerable charges. The novella, then, not only reveals Captain Vere’s “veer”; it also shows a way to avert that ever dangerous, often fatal tack. If the studious captain had been prepared to study stories like his own, his readings might have made him a vastly better guardian of his symbolic flock, particularly of Billy Budd, his most innocent sheep; had “Starry” Vere been more a philosopher-king and less a surrogate father-god, he need never have made his excruciating mistake, sacrificing his most beloved foster son to save their microcosmic world.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Another Interpretation of Captain Vere

Rob Atkinson, Jr., Florida State University College of Law, has published "Averting the Captain Vere 'Veer': Billy Budd as Melville's Republican Response to Plato" as FSU College of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 311. Here is the abstract.

This article shows how Melville's Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature's most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato's challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how poets create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic's philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of poetry that Plato should willing allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law's agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if they are to do justice. Paradoxically, the novella also shows how poetry can save law's agents, particularly the more Platonic, from Captain Vere's veer, a dangerous turn from fully legal justice to false and fatal severity.

Captain Vere has a tragic flaw all too common among leaders otherwise completely conscientious and competent: When faced with a range of courses - all legal, moral, and practicable - Vere invariably charts the most personally painful. Part of his no pain, no gain course steers him into fastidious studies that exclude both mere fiction and pure theory, ironically banishing Plato himself along with his poets. But Vere's own story, with its narrator's frequent theoretical interruptions and occasional allusions to Plato, demonstrates that the reading of just such stories may deliver leaders like him from over-harsh treatment of themselves and their most vulnerable charges. The novella, then, not only reveals Captain Vere's veer; it also shows a way to avert that ever dangerous, often fatal tack. If the studious captain had been prepared to study stories like his own, his readings might have made him a vastly better guardian of his symbolic flock, particularly of Billy Budd, his most innocent sheep; had Starry Vere been more a philosopher-king and less a surrogate father-god, he need never have made his excruciating mistake, sacrificing his most beloved foster son to save their microcosmic world.

Download the paper from SSRN here.