Wanting to add some titles to your bookshelf? Look no further than the most recent of our faculty members’ publications:
In his Philosophical Foundations of Climate Change Policy (Oxford University Press, 2021), Joseph Heath tackles the extent of human obligations in the face of an anthropogenic climate crisis. Taking into consideration the disagreements between a variant of utilitarianism popular among economists and the views of many environmental philosophers opposed to the need for the maximization of economic growth, Heath presents an approach to thinking about climate change policy that is grounded in social contract theory, which focuses on the fairness of existing institutions, rather than the welfare of future generations, to generate plausible policy prescriptions.
For his latest book, Mark Kingwell has once again teamed up with semiotician Joshua Glenn and the illustrator Seth to create a go-glossary for philosophical explorers: The Adventurer’s Glossary (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021) offers (sometimes surprising) insights into the origins of adventure-related terminology, whether the exploits are tiny or cosmic in scale. The book extends the entertaining and incisive critique found in the trio’s previous publications, casting a discerning eye on words from anything between surfer slang, gamer subculture, and the seemingly innocuous “A-OK.”
Kant and the Law of War (Oxford University Press, 2021), by Arthur Ripstein, offers a major intervention into just war theory, building on Kantian foundations to develop a political/legal reconceptualization of the duties of the state and the norms governing war. Beginning from the difference between governing human affairs through words and through force, Ripstein provides innovative accounts of the right of national defense, the importance of conducting war in ways that allow for the possibility of future peace, and the distinctive role of international institutions in bringing force under law.
Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest the existence of metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic features) that depend on, yet remain distinct from, lower-level physical configurations and features. Jessica M. Wilson uses her Metaphysical Emergence (Oxford University Press, 2021) to address with clarity the two key questions to which these appearances give rise: First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact?
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