Philosophy & Religion

It goes without saying that I do not deny -unless I am a fool -that many actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted, or that many called moral ought to be done and encouraged -but I think that one should be encouraged and the other avoided for other reasons than hitherto. We have to learn to think differently -in order at last, perhaps very late on, to attain even more: to feel differently.

This article develops an Arendtian conception of resentment and shows that resentment as a response to injustice is in fact only possible within a community of persons engaged in moral and recognitive relations. While Arendt is better known for her work on forgiveness—characterized as a creative rather than vindictive response to injury—this article suggests that Arendt provides a unique way of thinking about resentment as essentially a response to another human's subjectivity. But when injury is massive, so beyond the pale that the possibility of face-to-face human interaction is annihilated, the space for resentment is thereby destroyed. Ironically, while the absence of resentment might at first seem to be an unproblematically good thing, Arendt shows us that the loss of resentment actually signals the loss of the properly human realm.

Kathryn Gines's book details Hannah Arendt's racial and conceptual biases against Black people in the US and post-colonial Africa. Gines makes original and significant contributions to feminist philosophy by applying various feminist and anticolonial strategies, including standpoint theory and multidirectionality, to Arendt's political essays and concepts. Feminist critiques of Arendt in general and racial critiques of "Reflections on Little Rock" in particular are not new; however, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question offers a novel and comprehensive racial critique of Arendt's major writings. Gines offers a "sustained analysis of Arendt's treatment of the Black experience in the United States" (xii), as well as racial violence within the contexts of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and French and British imperialism and colonialism. In this review I will offer an overview of the book as a whole, before evaluating the extent of Gines's critique as it pertains to Arendt's misguided judgments and her theory of judgment.

Yunus Tuncel’s Agon in Nietzsche and Christa Davis Acampora’s Contesting Nietzsche both argue that the concept Wettkampf (agon or contest) deeply shapes Nietzsche’s philosophy. For Tuncel, “Nietzsche’s works are imbued with the spirit of agonism” (7), while for Acampora, “Nietzsche’s views on the agon shape what he argues and how” (3). In developing their own perspectives, both authors highlight the importance of an underappreciated work of Nietzsche’s: “Homer’s Wettkampf” and reveal how Homer’s notion of contest was imbued with a life-affirming spirit. Both examine Nietzsche’s appreciation of ancient Greek agon and its ability to publicly produce and reproduce cultural meaning.
These are nonetheless radically different books in both goal and approach. Tuncel’s book, Agon in Nietzsche, is decidedly more philological and archeological in method. Tuncel defines agonism broadly, “in the sense of a universal spirit of competition,” noting that Nietzsche’s agonism is “informed specifically by the ancient Greek culture of agon” (7) and offers a careful textual investigation of the moments throughout Nietzsche’s work where we find linguistic, symobolic and cultural representations of ancient Greek agon. The result is a historical foundation on which we can revaluate the importance of agon for Nietzsche’s philosophy.
Acampora’s book, Contesting Nietzsche, explores the conceptual terrain that developed out of Nietzsche’s fascination with ancient Greek agon. Her definition of agon is more narrow, and she is quick to point out that “not all contests are agons” (8), instead offering a technical and philosophical definition of agon according to a “typology of contests” that she develops in her first chapter.
Her book is analytic and argumentative. Over the course of the book, she examines Nietzsche’s greatest interpretive contests, by turning to four of his agonists: Homer, Socrates, Paul, and Wagner. From each of these respective contests, Acampora reveals Nietzsche’s commitments to life-affirming struggle, culturally productive suffering, non-religious morality, and continual self-creation. In addition to this, Acampora also contests standard readings that depict Nietzsche as socially conservative and elitist by narrowing the definition of agon to a pattern of activity that through separation and opposition, generates values that can be shared.  Moreover, Acampora contests Nietzsche by interpreting his work and developing her own view of the value and meaning of agon through her concept of artful naturalism; an approach to the soul, the sciences, morality and agency that denounces teleological, reductionist and determinist interpretations of Nietzsche.
Tuncel ends with more conservative conclusions that include links between war and agon rather than agon and democracy (which Acampora avows). And yet his careful and detailed approach reveals a great deal about what Nietzsche knew about ancient Greece and why that time and place played such a huge role in this thinking. Read together, Tuncel’s work acts as a foundation to many of Acampora’s interpretive insights.

In my current work, I argue that the oppressions experienced by transgender people and bisexual people are structurally identical insofar as they are premised on accusations of “reinforcing the binary,” an accusation that undermines not only the legitimacy of trans and bi lives, but also the political efficacy of trans and bi activism and coalition building. Given this similarity and the empirical fact that bisexuality is the most common sexual orientation for trans women, there ought to be thriving trans and bi coalitions and more suspicion against attitudes that pit bisexuality against transgender experience. BTQ coalitions don’t seem to exist, and my work attempts to show why.

This article develops an Arendtian conception of resentment and shows that resentment as a response to injustice is in fact only possible within a community of persons engaged in moral and recognitive relations. While Arendt is better known for her work on forgiveness—characterized as a creative rather than vindictive response to injury—this article suggests that Arendt provides a unique way of thinking about resentment as essentially a response to another human's subjectivity. But when injury is massive, so beyond the pale that the possibility of face-to-face human interaction is annihilated, the space for resentment is thereby destroyed. Ironically, while the absence of resentment might at first seem to be an unproblematically good thing, Arendt shows us that the loss of resentment actually signals the loss of the properly human realm.

Grace Hunt here seems to be one standard concern about resentment: namely, that even in its most mundane forms, resentment amounts to a form of petty backbiting that wants and hates what it can't have. Seen as a debilitating fixation on the past, resentment amplifies one's sense of injury alongside a desire for revenge. It is with these negative associations in mind that I suggest resentment is nonetheless a valuable critical resource for combating oppressive moral and religious norms. Of course, my defense of resentment needs to hold up against Nietzsche's contempt, since his Genealogy of Morals presents to this day the most scathing critique of the backward-looking emotion's legitimacy. I want to challenge this all too human view within philosophy that resentment is always already governed by the same underlying desire that governs ressentiment: namely revenge. 1 Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals attributes the historical and psychological lineage of Christian morality to the development of ressentiment: the chronic internalization of envy, cruelty, hatred, and resentment characteristic of disempowered people. Nietzsche's infamous genealogy, in other words, articulates Christian morality as developing out of the internalization of a desire for revenge and its attendant emotions and provides a new moral psychology 1 Whereas I understand ressentiment as deriving from the internalization of a variety of affects according to a desire for revenge, Ruth Abbey understands ressentiment to be rooted in vanity ["The Roots of Ressentiment," New Nietzsche

Kathryn Gines's book details Hannah Arendt's racial and conceptual biases against Black people in the US and post-colonial Africa. Gines makes original and significant contributions to feminist philosophy by applying various feminist and anticolonial strategies, including standpoint theory and multidirectionality, to Arendt's political essays and concepts. Feminist critiques of Arendt in general and racial critiques of "Reflections on Little Rock" in particular are not new; however, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question offers a novel and comprehensive racial critique of Arendt's major writings. Gines offers a "sustained analysis of Arendt's treatment of the Black experience in the United States" (xii), as well as racial violence within the contexts of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and French and British imperialism and colonialism. In this review I will offer an overview of the book as a whole, before evaluating the extent of Gines's critique as it pertains to Arendt's misguided judgments and her theory of judgment.

Transgender and gender-nonconforming people remain excluded from women's health spaces, and nurses with expertise in women's health best serve their needs when they seek sexual, reproductive, gynecologic, or obstetric care. However, commentary regarding the term "women" and exclusionary policies and behaviors in health care marginalize gender-nonconforming patients and contribute to health disparities. Therefore, the purpose of this article is twofold. First, we review terminology related to gender-nonconforming populations and their known health care needs; provide a brief historical overview of gender and health care; and describe the influence of white supremacist, misogynist, and heteronormative influences in women's health care. Second, we generate a call to action and specifically discuss the responsibilities of nurses and nursing organizations to ensure the provision of gender-equitable and respectful care and generate clinical recommendations for the specialty.