372-73 - The basic general obligation here must be to consider seriously what one can reasonably do to help the realization of another person's freedom, taking note of its importance and influenceability, and of one's own circumstances and likely effectiveness.

373 - The necessity to ask that question (rather than to proceed on the possibly comforting assumption that we owe nothing to each other) can be the beginning of a more comprehensive line of ethical reasoning, and the territory of human rights belongs there.

Given any person's limited abilities and reach, and the priorities between different types of obligations as well as the demands of other . . . concerns one may reasonably havae, there is serious practical reasoning to be undertaken, in which one's various obligations (including imperfect obligations) must, directly or indirectly, figure.

The recognition of human rights is not an insistence that everone rises to help prevent and violation of any human right no matter where it occurs. It is, rather, an acknowledgment that if one is in a position to do something effective in preventing the violation of such a right, then one does have a good reason to do just that -- a reason that must be taken into acount in deciding what should be done.

There is a universal ethical demand here, but not one that automatically identifies contingency-free, ready-made actions.

375 - the presumed precision of legal rights is often contrasted with inescapable ambiguityes in the ethical claims of human rights.

376 - when the human right of a person not to be tortured is acknowledged, the importance of freedom from torture is reaffirmed and acclaimed for everyone

379 - economic and social rights -- welfare rights

384 - human rights advocates want the recognized human rights to be maximally realized.

385 - A claim that a certain freedom is important enough to be seen as a human right is also a claim that reasoned scrutiny would sustain that judgment.

386 - What sustainability of a judgement demands is a general apreciation of the reach of reasoning in favour of those rights, if and when others try to scrutinize the claims on an impartial basis.

387 - The fact that monitoring of violations of human rights and the proceduring of "naming and shaming" can be so effective (at least in putting the violators on the defensive) is some indication of the reach of public reasoning when information becomes available and ethical arguments are allowed rather than suppressed.
CHANCERY!

388-89 - what tends 'to inflame the minds' of suffering humanity cannot but be of immediate interest both to policy-making and to the diagnosis of injustice. A sense of injustice must be examined even if it turns out to be erroneously based, and it must, of course, be thoroughly pursued if it is well founded.

389 - Howeer, since injustices relate, often enough, to hardy social divisions, . . . it is often difficult to surmount those barriers to have an objective analysis of the contrast between what is happening and what could have happened -- a constrast that is central to the advancement of justice.

Outrage can be used to motivate, rather than to replace, reasoning.

390 - Resistance to injustice typically draws on both indignation and argumen.

393 - It is frequently asserted that justice should not only be done, but also be "seen to be done."

the administration of justice can, in general, be more effective if judges are seen to be doing a good job, rather than botching things up. If a judgment inspires confidence and general endorsement, then very likely it can be more easily implemented.

394 - If the importance of public reasoning has been one of the major concerns of this book, so has been the need to accept the plurality of reasons that may be sensibly accomodated in an exercise of evaluation. . . when they yield conflicting judgements, there is an important challenge in determining what credible conclusions can be derived, after considering all the arguments.

395 - non-commensurability - irreducible diversity between distinct objects of value.

nearly all appraisals undertaken as a part of normal living involve prioritization and weighting of distinct concerns, and that there is nothing particularly special in the recognition that evaluation has to grammple with competing priorities.


412 - Rawls's attempt at getting to a perfectly just society with a combination of ideal institutions and corresponding ideal behaviour. In a world where those extremely demanding behavioural assumptions do not hold, the institutional choices made will tend not to deliver the kind of society that would have strong claims to being seen as perfectly just.

a good deal of the theory presented here has been directly concerned with people's lives and capabilities, and the deprivation and suppression suffered.

414-15 - a number of different theories of justice share some common presumptions about what it is like to be a human being. We could have been creatures incapable of sympathy, unmoved by the pain and humiliation f others, uncaring of freedom, and -- no less significant -- unable to reason, argue, disagree and concur. The strong presence of these features in human lives does not tell us a great deal about what particular theory of justice should be chosen, but it does indicate that the general pursuit of justice might be hard to eradicate in human society, evven though we can go about that pursuit in different ways.

324 - It should be clear how central the role of public reasoning is for the understanding of justice.
BH is a world w/o public reasoning.

326 - central issues in a broader understanding of democracy are political participation, dialogue, and public interaction.


335-37 freedom of the press (censorship class) -- handout for first class?

105 A systematic theory of comparative justice does not need, nor does it necessarily yield, an answer to the question "what is a just society?"

115 It is, I think, a mistake to try to interpret the different decisions that a person takes on a variety of disparate subjects in terms of just one classificatory idea . . .

as a useful place to make notes and then find them again, particularly helpful when I'm currently working on two different computers.

Teaching notes:

Death Penalty:

interesting article in The New Yorker, January 2, 2012, p. 54-63. No Remorse by Rachel Aviv. About a teenager who killed his grandfather and didn't seem to understand the consequences.
Corresponding case: Roper v. Simmons, SCt 2005 -- death penalty made illegal for juveniles.
Not sure how useful for the class, but maybe with A Clockwork Orange in C&P to consider Alex's level of responsibility? Maybe with Philosophy for HJS?

Censorship:

Too old for global censorship course, but reading of new edition of Dorian Grey, taken from Wilde's edited typescripts -- two levels of censorship: Lippincott's (widely regarded as still more homoerotic than book version) for reasons of commercial feasibility; Wilde's own in expanded book edition for commercial reasons -- because of wide condemnation of Lippincott's version. Since Wilde agreed to these changes, how are they censorship? a) cultural censorship -- the love that literally dare not speak its name -- must be kept from leaking through explicitly, even though now everyone sees it. But also more scandalous hetero references as well. b) commercial censorship -- a writer must be able to publish in order to make a living.

First thoughts: William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's 1991 novel The Difference Engine was my first encounter with the Steampunk genre. Strictly speaking, one might argue my first encounter was in childhood, with the Disney film version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, or possibly with the original tv series of The Wild, Wild West in syndicated reruns . . . In any case, it's certainly true that it was my first encounter with Steampunk as a term.

On my first reading, when the book came out in paperback in '92, I was reading as a fan of Gibson's Neuromancer and its sequels, and as someone who avidly read Victorian novels for enjoyment. I was not yet an academic, although I was starting to imagine grad school as my next step, and I wasn't reading much science fiction, though I was keen on cyberpunk. I read it again in grad school, after reading Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil: Or the Two Nations; his character Dandy Mick Radley had an oddly familiar name that I just couldn't place until idle conversation at a party led me to realize that I apparently had a brain like a sieve. (G & S appropriate the major characters from that work for the first section of TDE, although they give all of them a very different spin.) I reread the book, and even gave a conference paper on the intersection of the two texts. A recent reread of my notes for this project, hoping to resurrect it, left me appalled at the facile things I am apparently capable of saying.

I've been intending a reread for some time. First of all, The Difference Engine continually makes the list of Influential Steampunk Works. And second, there seems to be a lot of backlash about it. Although it certainly has it fans, it seems that a lot of steampunks don't really like the book. This isn't surprising; it's a demanding book. It's dystopian, it's not an adventure story, the sole airship appears in a 1905 frame to a flashback, and it really, really helps to have an in-depth knowledge of Victorian culture and history in order to "get" everything. (This is *not* one of those books where the more you know, the more annoyed you get.) I happen, as a 19th century literature Ph.D., to have that level of background knowledge; but there is The Difference Dictionary, a fabulous resource for the vast percentage of the population who didn't waste, er, spend a decade of their adult life dedicated to the Victorian era: http://www.sff.net/people/gunn/dd/ ) I did not have most of that knowledge the first time I read it, and I liked the book well enough, but gave my first copy away to someone who was interested in reading it; I didn't think I'd likely reread it.

I was wrong. And now I'm coming back to the book for the first time in over a decade from a very different place. My Ph.D. is completed; I'm working on a series of neoVictorian conference papers and nascent projects which I'm hoping will add up into a book, and one of them involves this book. I've been exploring and participating in the Steampunk subculture as well as the fiction. I'm coming in this reread wondering what's going to stand out for me this time, and wondering if the text will stand up to my re-reread, and to the place it's come to occupy in my imagination.

Hence, I'm going to blog this reread. (I'm also rereading Sybil, and I'm sure there will be additional byways along the way.) I'll be linking to this journal, eventually, from places where people might be interested in sharing their opinions. So . . .

Shall we begin?

Lack of posting directly connected to lack of progress made over the summer.

Finally finished Andrew Motion's Keats biography -- remarkable that someone how lived only 25 years can still have a near-600 page biography -- and that it was not dull. Thinking about which poems to teach.

Rereading East Lynne by Ellen ("Mrs. Henry") Wood, which came about by chance. Spent most of the novel thinking about gender issues, the sensation plot, how difficult it was to believe Lady Isabel as a character . . . then realized this is a novel with a lawyer as male lead/romantic hero. But because of the plot and the novel's preoccupations, he is mostly a lawyer offstage. Wonder what I can do with that? Something, certainly.

Have read some neoVictorians, the best of which was Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night, which has a solid feel of the period. Little steampunk, primarily lurking on LJ communities and seeing that the preoccupations seem to be more about the clothes and taking on personas. Although Foglio & Foglio's Girl Genius webcomic plays with the tropes interestingly.

There's a whole industry of Byron/vampire novels out there. Have two by Tom Hollander, which I have hope for, as he also writes history, and Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard in which Keats, Shelley, Byron and a less-interesting primary character encounter lamias. Interesting primarily in the fact that they *exist* but also the afterlife of Byron's public image.

Weekend away was fairly productive:

read George Levine's How to Read the Victorian Novel, which was basic but a nice survey/reminder, and did not buy into the "the Victorian novel exists to uphold the conservative social order" trope which I find stifling.

read Peter Ackroyd's Blake biography, which is lavishly illustrated and makes me want to seek out more of Blake's art than just the illustrated books and illustrations I'm familiar with. Also picked up a Portable Blake used, though it is rather old fashioned in regularizing the spelling and etc. Will have to have the complete works sooner or later. Am looking forward to pulling out my copy of reproductions of all the Illuminated Books. (Also read a rather fluffy historical novel With Blake In, Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier. Could have done with More Blake In.)

Reading: Byron: The Flawed Angel by Phyllis Grosskurth.

Grosskurth's biography, like Benita Eisler's, which I read perhaps a decade ago, doesn't actually make me like Byron very much. I suppose I'm a little *cough* mature now to be enthralled by the Byronic hero, but Byron himself doesn't live up to that standard. Mostly, he seems spoiled and bipolar. Plus he's the least interesting of the Romantics as a poet.

Mostly, he is interesting as "This first modern celebrity" (271). Also, worth looking at his Romantic Orientalism.

V. pretty when his weight was down. Thoroughly bisexual. Very promiscuous. A sort of less sunny, more talented, more petulant Capt. Jack Harkness.

I used to imagine Byron/Augusta incest as v. romantic & tragic, but Augusta sounds not v. bright; perhaps obvs. that because she looked a good deal like him he projected onto her. Ada grows up to become interesting figure. Annoyed at him that he sought out Shelley for intellectual conversation but not Mary, whom Shelley always treated as an equal.

To read: excerpts from Childe Harold and Don Juan in the Longman's anthology. The Giaour in Three Oriental Tales. Byron and the Victorians -- interesting to see how his more judgmental successors approached him.