Les Investissements moraux dans le monde contemporain : Une Comparaison entre Aristote, Marx, et Latour

Introduction

MISE EN CONTEXTE / PREPARATION :

Maintenant, il y a plusieurs moyens d’améliorer son statut économique. On peut travailler et gagner un salaire, ou on peut faire des investissements pour avoir des revenus non gagnés. Avec des investissements dans les fonds indiciels, par exemple, on choisit une  liste d’entreprises dont on pense qu’elles resteront pertinentes pour le  monde contemporain et qu’elles donneront des bonnes dividendes. C’est plus ou moins la même stratégie financière avec les fonds communs de placement. La différence est qu’il faut faire confiance à la personne ou à l’entreprise qui contrôle la gestion de portefeuille aussi.

On California and Climate Change Policy

If anything is eminently clear from Roger Karapin’s book, Political Opportunities for Climate Policy: California, New York and the Federal Government, it is that the government of California presents magnificent methods of rallying together its populace and industrial community around climate change, toward dramatically reducing harmful emissions into the atmosphere in both the short- and long-term. Any doubt of this can be resolved in the knowledge that targets for reductions include a “29% reduction from the business-as-usual scenario, and a 32% cut in per-capita emissions over 1990-2020” (32), an era in which emissions across the world have often increased.

At-Risk Communities and Climate Justice

Whereas it is critical to dismantle theoretical claims about long-term anthropogenic climate change damaging everyone without discrimination that discount the realities about short-term global warming, there are a number of very real and tangible avenues that communities of color, such as that of Gulfport, Mississippi, and small developing countries, including the Maldives, can pursue to effect substantial change and curb the treacherous effects of climate change in their areas. These go beyond emphasizing to other communities and national leaders the sociocultural significance of maintaining their lands—such as by detailing the religious rites and rituals that have taken place in the waters of Turkey Creek, as Derrick Evans chooses to do in many interviews and publications, and by Mohamed Nasheed’s explanations that climate change, in the business-as-usual scenario, will wipe out his nation, leaving its residents climate refugees and speakers of a soon-to-be lost language.

Joining the Tribe: Conversation and Climate Change

We live in a world in which denial of anthropogenic climate change, a phenomenon whose existence and form has been agreed upon by nearly the entirety of the scientific community, is not at all restricted to a handful of conspiracy theorists or anti-science zealots. This denial is institutionalized, and it has been for years. Such denial manifests itself in de facto bans throughout the United States’ Office of International Climate and Clean Energy on the inclusion of phrases such as "climate change," "emissions reduction," or "Paris Agreement" in written communication, since March, 2017 (Wolff). Such informal censorship is not wholly uncommon within American spheres of government. Beginning in March, 2015, officials in the Florida Department of Environmental Protection have halted use of “climate change” and “global warming,” citing directives that such controversial terminology is best avoided altogether (McCoy). However, censorship is certainly not the only institutional practice ignoring the real and contemporary ramifications of global warming: The government of North Carolina—whose populace will likely face a regional sea-level rise to the tune of 39 inches over the 21st century—since the passage into law of House Bill 819 in 2012, interdicts any usage of scientific predictions on sea-level changes in its coastal zoning policies (Harish). Legislation of this sort often yields dramatic consequences, as Don Barber makes clear: Coastal development, particularly in flood zones, can be devastating, and has been a significant cause of increased property damage over the course of the past several decades, in the wake of more frequently intense tropical storms and hurricanes. Universally and unambiguously, this willful ignorance of such a scientifically confirmed reality is deadly.

Kant, Mill, and Animal Agriculture

The ethical methodologies of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill are typically perceived as in utter opposition to one another, on account of how they evaluate consequences. Kant’s ethics are rooted in a hypothetical consideration of an action’s successful universal applicability, without any situational considerations. In contrast, Mill’s moral judgment is based in a cost-benefit analysis of the potential situational consequences that may arise from a particular action. While this difference may often promote unique moral evaluations, their ethical methodologies likely lead to a similar conclusion about the ethical response to animal agriculture. I contend that, while Kant and Mill would evaluate animal agriculture with different considerations and calculations, they would both argue that consuming flesh is wholly unethical, given the modern empirical research about its unavoidable, disastrous consequences. In this paper, I will explain each philosopher’s ethical framework. I will then enumerate some of the direct and inevitable consequences of animal husbandry and justify their consideration in each moral system. Finally, I will conclude by arguing that sustainable eating must preclude animal consumption.

On Haredi Jews and Tzniut

Within Orthodox Jewry, the practice of respecting tzniut (modesty), is nearly omnipresent. Across Jerusalem, scattered among tour groups and secular residents are flocks of orthodox or haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jewish women and men, often segregated by gender, each donning specific attire for their activities: The men often wear suits with tzitzit (fringes) hanging from the front and back on each side of their plain-white button-downs, so that they may be prepared for the frequently recurring religious services, song sessions, and meals; whereas, the women wear comparatively simple, long, black dresses and sheitels (head-coverings), so that they may keep their bodies to themselves while they venture outside the home.

Of course, it may be simple to note the mere rigidity of Jewish gender roles (Still noteworthy: My discussion will address gender as binary, as it is often seen in these religious communities.), given my quest to discuss a religious and/or cultural belief and/or practice contrary to Western—often individualist—conceptions of human rights, but I will choose to focus on the female hair-coverings, and the reasoning behind them.

On Feeling Good and Food Activism

On Friday, March 18, I joined the Haverford College volunteering organization, 8th Dimension, on its (first) annual Day of Service, during which I chose to give up three hours of my time after French Class to better the lives of hungry people in Philadelphia. To be honest, in choosing among the different events, I didn’t read much more than the first sentence—the group needed a minimum number of people in every program for each to run properly, and, by the program’s end, I would have most likely done something to better the world, whatever that may mean. As long as I took a space somewhere in the day’s events, and other people did the same, the Day of Service could stave off any attempt at mortality, and I could pursue a different activity in March 2017.

On Self-Care Amid Grand Opportunities

I don’t remember, with clarity, any moment of the first two weeks of this semester.

I must have hugged my friends after seeing them for the first time in months; I must have kissed the girl whom I’d traveled 20 hours to visit during the last week of Winter Break, before she—she must have—decided that she wouldn’t see me when I’m sick; I must have taken heaping plates of food from the “Main Line” of the Dining Center and later only nibbled at what seemed softest or most Nutella-covered, and I must have thrown up most of that, too.

I think I read Hobbes on the Tri-Co Van, while Michael, the driver, shuffled between the classical channel and the jazz one; I think I announced the women’s basketball game, crediting my lapses of attention to the chamomile tea in my mug; I think I said something about independent film in my French class, but maybe I didn’t. I really don’t remember.