Books by Nicolae Morar
In this book, nine thought-leaders engage with some of the hottest moral issues in science and et... more In this book, nine thought-leaders engage with some of the hottest moral issues in science and ethics. Based on talks originally given at the annual “Purdue Lectures in Ethics, Policy, and Science,” the chapters explore interconnections between the three areas in an engaging and accessible way. Addressing a mixed public audience, the authors go beyond dry theory to explore some of the difficult moral questions that face scientists and policy-makers every day. The introduction presents a theoretical framework for the book, defining the term “bioethics” as extending well beyond human well-being to wider relations between humans, nonhuman animals, the environment, and biotechnologies. Three sections then explore the complex relationship between moral value, scientific knowledge, and policy making. The first section starts with thoughts on nonhuman animal pain and moves to a discussion of animal understanding. The second section explores climate change and the impact of “green” nanotechnology on environmental concerns. The final section begins with dialog about ethical issues in nanotechnology, moves to an exploration of bio-banks (a technology with broad potential medical and environmental impact), and ends with a survey of the impact of biotechnologies on (synthetic) life itself.
Contents: Part 1: Animals: Moral agency, moral considerability, and consciousness (Daniel Kelly) and From minds to minding (Mark Bernstein); Animal Pain: What is it and why does it matter? (Bernard Rollin). Part 2: Environment: The future of environmental ethics (Holmes Rolston III); Climate change, human rights, and the trillionth ton of carbon (Henry Shue); Ethics, environment, and nanotechnology (Barbara Karn). Part 3: Biotechnologies: Nanotechnologies: Science and society (James Leary); Ethical issues in constructing and using bio-banks (Eric Meslin); Synthetic life: A new industrial revolution (Gregory Kaebnick).
Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopower” has been a highly fertile concept in recent theory, influe... more Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopower” has been a highly fertile concept in recent theory, influencing thinkers worldwide across a variety of disciplines and concerns. In The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Foucault famously employed the term to describe “a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them.” With this volume, Vernon W. Cisney and Nicolae Morar bring together leading contemporary scholars to explore the many theoretical possibilities that the concept of biopower has enabled while at the same time pinpointing their most important shared resonances.
Situating biopower as a radical alternative to traditional conceptions of power—what Foucault called “sovereign power”—the contributors examine a host of matters centered on life, the body, and the subject as a living citizen. Altogether, they pay testament to the lasting relevance of biopower in some of our most important contemporary debates on issues ranging from health care rights to immigration laws, HIV prevention discourse, genomics medicine, and many other topics.
Contributors: Judith Revel, Antonio Negri, Catherine Mills, Ian Hacking, Mary-Beth Mader, Jeff Nealon, Eduardo Mendieta, Carlos Novas, Jana Sawicki, David Halperin, Todd May, Ladelle McWhorter, Martina Tazziolli, Frédéric Gros, Paul Patton, Nikolas Rose, Paul Rabinow, Roberto Esposito, Ann L. Stoler
Deleuze and Foucault had a long, complicated and productive relationship, in which each was at va... more Deleuze and Foucault had a long, complicated and productive relationship, in which each was at various times a significant influence on the other. This collection combines 3 original essays by Deleuze and Foucault, in which they respond to each other's work, with 16 critical essays by key contemporary scholars working in the field. The result is a sustained discussion and analysis of the various dimensions of this fascinating relationship, which clarifies the implications of their philosophical encounter.
Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault are widely accepted to be central figures of post‐war French p... more Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault are widely accepted to be central figures of post‐war French philosophy. Philosophers, cultural theorists, and others have devoted considerable
effort to the critical examination of the work of each of these thinkers, but despite the strong biographical and philosophical connection between Foucault and Deleuze, very little has been done to explore the relationship between them. This special issue of Foucault Studies is the first collection of essays to address this critical deficit with a rigorous comparative discussion of the work of these two philosophers.
This collection of essays thus brings together both senior and junior scholars from diverse backgrounds to clarify the implications of this important philosophical encounter between Foucault and Deleuze.
Marco Altamirano’s essay focuses on the shared concepts of “milieu” and “machine,” in Deleuze and Foucault. Vernon W. Cisney’s essay defend’s a Deleuzian politics by drawing on an important political concept shared with Foucault: “becoming other.” William E. Connolly’s essay offers an exploration of creativity and the ambiguous role it plays in the understanding of freedom that we find in Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Foucault. Erin Gilson’s essay offers an original account of the shared methodology of “problematization” found in both
Deleuze and Foucault. Wendy Grace’s essay traces Deleuze and Foucault’s shared Nietzschean philosophical origins. Chris Penfield’s essay articulates a theory of “transversal politics”
common to both Deleuze and Foucault. Finally, Dianna Taylor’s essay compares the respective ontologies of Deleuze and Foucault.
"I should have written you after my first reading of The Living Currency; it was already breath-t... more "I should have written you after my first reading of The Living Currency; it was already breath-taking and I should have responded. After reading it a few more times, I know it is the best book of our times.' Letter to Pierre Klossowski from Michel Foucault, winter 1970.
Living Currency is the first English translation of Klossowski's La monnaie vivante. It offers an analysis of economic production as a mechanism of psychic production of desires and is a key work from this often overlooked but wonderfully creative French thinker.
1. Introduction - Christopher Penfield
2. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida: A Chronology - Ala... more 1. Introduction - Christopher Penfield
2. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida: A Chronology - Alan Schrift
I. The History of Madness Debate
3. Cogito and the History of Madness - Jacques Derrida
4. My Body, This Paper, This Fire - Michel Foucault
5. ‘But Such People Are Insane’: On a Disputed Passage from the First Meditation - Jean-Marie Beyssade
6. A Return to Descartes’s First Meditation - Michel Foucault
7. Deconstruction, Care of the Self, Spirituality: Putting Foucault and Derrida to the Test - Edward McGushin
II. The End of Reason
8. The History of Historicity: The Critique of Reason in Foucault (and Derrida) - Amy Allen
9. "The End of Man: Foucault, Derrida, and the Auto-Bio-Graphical" - Ellen Armour
III. The Voice
10. ‘Murmurs’ and ‘Calls’: The Significance of Voice in the Political Reason of Foucault and Derrida - Fred Evans
11. “Let Others be Ends in themselves”: The Convergence between Foucault’s Parrēsia and Derrida’s Teleiopoesis - Leonard Lawlor
IV. The Placeless Place
12. The Aporia and the Problem - Paul Rekret
13. The Folded Unthought and the Irreducibly Unthinkable: Singularity, Multiplicity, and Materiality, in and between Foucault and Derrida - Arkady Plotnitsky
V. Crisis, Life and Death
14. Living and Dying with Foucault and Derrida: The Question of Biopower - Jeffrey T. Nealon
15. Philosophy on Trial: The Crisis of Deciding between Foucault and Derrida - Peter Gratton
The Deleuze Seminars by Nicolae Morar
The Deleuze Seminars, 2020
In Gilles Deleuze, From A to Z, Deleuze describes his motivation for working on a phi- losopher w... more In Gilles Deleuze, From A to Z, Deleuze describes his motivation for working on a phi- losopher with whom he had little in common: first, for Deleuze, Kant’s writing constituted such a turning point in numerous ways, and, second, he initiated something in philosophy that had never been advanced previously. Specifically, says Deleuze, he erected a tribunal
of reason, things being judged as a function of a tribunal of reason. To do so, he invents a prodigious method called the critical method, the properly Kantian method. Deleuze admits finding all of this aspect of Kant quite horrible, but it's both fascination and horror because, for Deleuze, this is so ingenious. For Kant created an astonishing reversal of concepts: rather than time being derived from movement, Kant reverses the subordination, with movement henceforth depending on time, and thus, time ceasing to be circular and becoming a straight line. And late in his life, Kant introduces his conception of the Sublime, in which the fac- ulties enter into conflicts, having discordant accords, then reconciling, but no longer being subject to a tribunal. For Deleuze, then, Kant is clearly a great philosopher, with a whole undergirding in his works that makes Deleuze quite enthusiastic, on top of which is a sys- tem of judgment that Deleuze says he would like to do away with, but without standing in judgment.
Editorial Introductions by Nicolae Morar
Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault are widely accepted to be central figures of post-war French p... more Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault are widely accepted to be central figures of post-war French philosophy. Philosophers, cultural theorists, and others have devoted considerable effort to the critical examination of the work of each of these thinkers, but despite the strong biographical and philosophical connection between Foucault and Deleuze, very little has been done to explore the relationship between them. This special issue of Foucault Studies is the first collection of essays to address this critical deficit with a rigorous comparative discussion of the work of these two philosophers.
Papers by Nicolae Morar
Bioethics, 2018
Bioethicists, alongside various medical practitioners, epidemiologists, infectious disease specia... more Bioethicists, alongside various medical practitioners, epidemiologists, infectious disease specialists, microbial biologists, and ecologists have been reminding us that health is best understood by addressing animal, human, and environmental concerns simultaneously, as they are fundamentally linked. 1 Indeed, as the renowned epidemiologist William Foege claimed: '[y]ou cannot tell the story of human health separate from animal health or environmental health'. 2 A cross-section of these diverse researchers has come together around the idea that human life and human health are intimately interrelated with other species and inextricably linked to the environment-a position with important bioethical implications. From this starting point, this same cross-section raises an important methodological point as they decry the overspecialization of medicine and the compartmentalized scientific knowledge that underlies medical practice-all this, at the expense of integrating central aspects of veterinary medicine and environmental management into human medicine.
mSystems
Humans are inextricably linked to each other and our natural world, and microorganisms lie at the... more Humans are inextricably linked to each other and our natural world, and microorganisms lie at the nexus of those interactions. Microorganisms form genetically flexible, taxonomically diverse, and biochemically rich communities, i.e., microbiomes that are integral to the health and development of macroorganisms, societies, and ecosystems.
Implicit Cognition and Gifts: How Does social Psychology help Us Think Differently about Medical Practice?
The Hastings Center report, May 1, 2016
This article takes the following two assumptions for granted: first, that gifts influence physici... more This article takes the following two assumptions for granted: first, that gifts influence physicians and, second, that the influences gifts have on physicians may be harmful for patients. These assumptions are common in the applied ethics literature, and they prompt an obvious practical question, namely, what is the best way to mitigate the negative effects? We examine the negative effects of gift giving in depth, considering how the influence occurs, and we assert that the ethical debate surrounding gift-giving practices must be reoriented. Our main claim is that the failure of recent policies addressing gift giving can be traced to a misunderstanding of what psychological mechanisms are most likely to underpin physicians' biased behavior as a result of interaction with the medical industry. The problem with gift giving is largely not a matter of malicious or consciously self-interested behavior, but of well-intentioned actions on the part of physicians that are nonetheless per...
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2019
Biodiversity has become one of the most important conservation values that drive our ecological m... more Biodiversity has become one of the most important conservation values that drive our ecological management and directly inform our environmental policy. This paper highlights the dangers of strategically appropriating concepts from ecological sciences and also of uncritically inserting them into conservation debates as unqualified normative landmarks. Here, I marshal evidence from a cutting-edge research
program in microbial ecology, which shows that if species richness is our major normative target, then we are faced with extraordinary ethical implications. This example challenges our well-received beliefs about biodiversity and it invites us to critically rethink the nature of this concept so that a more robust understanding of biodiversity and of its role in conservation policy could emerge.
The Quarterly Review of Biology, 2019
It has become increasingly clear that there is a vast array of microorganisms on and in the human... more It has become increasingly clear that there is a vast array of microorganisms on and in the human body, known collectively as the human microbiome. Our microbiomes are extraordinarily complex, and this complexity has been linked to human health and well-being. Given the complexity and importance of our microbiomes, we struggle with how to think about them. There is a long list of competing metaphors that we use to refer to our microbiomes, including as an "organ" containing our "second genome," as a "symbiont" in the human "holobiont," and as an ecological "community" in the human "ecosystem," among others. Each of these makes different assumptions about the fundamental biology of the human-microbe system, with important implications for how we choose to study microbiomes, and the therapies we envision for correcting microbiome-linked disorders. We believe that it is time to move beyond metaphors, and we propose a scientifically pluralist approach that focuses on characterizing fundamental biological properties of microbiomes such as heritability, transmission mode, rates of dispersal rates, and strength of local selection. Such an approach will allow us to break out of the confines of narrow conceptual frameworks, and to guide the exploration of our complexity as chimeric beings.
American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience, forthcoming
Public attitudes concerning cognitive enhancements are significant for a number of reasons. They ... more Public attitudes concerning cognitive enhancements are significant for a number of reasons. They tell us about how socially acceptable these emerging technologies are considered to be, but they also provide a window into the ethical reasons that are likely to get traction in the ongoing debates about them. We thus see Conrad et al’s project of empirically investigating the effect of metaphors and context in shaping attitudes about cognitive enhancements as both interesting and important. We sketch what we suspect is a central theme that runs through these public attitudes, but that Conrad el al’s paper elides. We were disappointed that they did not more directly explore the efficacy of frames and metaphors associated with the values of authenticity and self-expression. This seems like a missed opportunity. Based on the premise that individualistic values enjoy centrality in Western and especially North American culture (e.g. Taylor 1989), we hypothesize that metaphors and frames informed by those values will be especially effective in shaping public attitudes. That is, when various kinds of novel enhancement are described as allowing people to more fully express themselves, or as helping people overcome obstacles to being authentic and true to their inner sense of themselves, those enhancements will be considered justified, and their use more likely to be viewed as socially acceptable by the public. We support our contention by drawing on work by Elliott (2004, 2011, c.f. Kadlac 2018), and discuss how this study, and others modeled on it, might shed light on our hypothesis.
Bioethics
This paper argues that the practical reach and ethical impact of the One Health paradigm is condi... more This paper argues that the practical reach and ethical impact of the One Health paradigm is conditional on satisfactorily distinguishing between interconnected and interdependent factors among human, non-human, and environmental health. Interconnection does not entail interdependence. Offering examples of interconnections and interdependence in the context of existing One Health literature, we demonstrate that the conversations about One Health do not yet sufficiently differentiate between those concepts. They tend to either ignore such distinctions or embrace bioethically untenable positions. We conclude that careful conceptual differentiation can prevent One Health stakeholders either from overreaching or under-reaching the practical and ethical boundaries of this developing paradigm.
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
Dominant views about the nature of health and disease in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine... more Dominant views about the nature of health and disease in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine have presumed the existence of a fixed, stable, individual organism as the bearer of health and disease states, and as such, the appropriate target of medical therapy and ethical concern. However, recent developments in microbial biology (Turnbaugh & al 2007; Gordon & Klaenhammer 2011; The Human Microbiome Project Consortium 2012; Grice & Segre 2012; Blaser 2014; Knight 2015; Relman 2015), neuroscience (Kim & Johnson 2010; Maravita & Iriki 2004), the philosophy of cognitive science (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Clark 2007a, 2007b; Sterelny 2010; Hutchins 2010), and social and personality psychology (Ickes, Snyder, & Garcia 1997; Drigotas, Rusbult, Wieselquist, & Whitton 1999; Fitzsimmons, Finkel, & van Dellen, 2015), have produced a novel understanding of the individual and its fluid boundaries. Drawing on converging evidence from these disciplines, and following recent research in public health (Atlas 2012; Mackenzie & al. 2013; Horton & al. 2014), we argue that certain features of our biological and social environment can be so tightly integrated as to constitute a unit of care extending beyond the intuitive boundaries of skin and skull.
This paper lays the groundwork for a research program in extended health. Drawing from work in microbiology and social and personality psychology, we develop and defend the Hypothesis of Extended Health (HEH), which denies the claim that health and disease states are predicated solely on the internal functioning of an organism. We contend that this view has profound and wide-ranging clinical implications. Namely, that the targets of medical invention and ethical concern are wider and more diverse than usually assumed.
American Journal of Bioethics
American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience
Goering and colleagues have done an important service in bringing feminist philosophical theories... more Goering and colleagues have done an important service in bringing feminist philosophical theories of self, identity, autonomy, and agency into a meaningful dialogue with the bioethical debates surrounding the next generation of therapeutic neuroprosthetics. We share many of the theoretical commitments expressed by the authors, and we are broadly sympathetic to their project (Morar & Skorburg, 2016; Beever & Morar 2016; Kelly & Morar 2016; Alfano & Skorburg, 2017). We agree that relational models provide powerful theoretical frameworks for understanding the many ways in which agents opportunistically incorporate features of the external environment (including props, tools, other people, etc.) to bolster their capabilities. Still, we perceive two significant shortcomings in their argument: (1) the authors fail to properly highlight the sense of vulnerability entailed by their view of relational agency and (2) the authors do not fully appreciate the potential threats to personal identity entailed by their view. We will unpack each of these worries in an effort to strengthen the authors' argument.
Environmental Philosophy
The question of individuality has occupied the forefront of philosophical, biological, ecological... more The question of individuality has occupied the forefront of philosophical, biological, ecological, and ethical research. Numerous domains of inquiry are traditionally predicated upon recognizing discrete entities in the world whose behavior can be measured and whose value can be meaningfully ascribed. In this paper we consider a series of biological, cognitive, and social challenges to the metaphysical concept of individuality as the ground of the psychological-individual, or self. In order to show why the cumulative effects of various challenges to the self are genuine philosophical concerns, we introduce a core distinction between causation and constitution. We then pinpoint the ethical consequences of taking seriously this potential dismantlement of individuality. We claim that, given its intrinsic dynamism, an ecological conception of individuality renders ascriptions of autonomy to selves highly improbable -or even meaningless. Last, we find conceptual resources in the work of environmental philosopher Arne Naess and show how his distinction between shallow and deep responses helps us rethink the notion of individuality, and thus, assess whether the conceptual and normative coherence of human autonomy could, at least partially, be salvaged.
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Books by Nicolae Morar
Contents: Part 1: Animals: Moral agency, moral considerability, and consciousness (Daniel Kelly) and From minds to minding (Mark Bernstein); Animal Pain: What is it and why does it matter? (Bernard Rollin). Part 2: Environment: The future of environmental ethics (Holmes Rolston III); Climate change, human rights, and the trillionth ton of carbon (Henry Shue); Ethics, environment, and nanotechnology (Barbara Karn). Part 3: Biotechnologies: Nanotechnologies: Science and society (James Leary); Ethical issues in constructing and using bio-banks (Eric Meslin); Synthetic life: A new industrial revolution (Gregory Kaebnick).
Situating biopower as a radical alternative to traditional conceptions of power—what Foucault called “sovereign power”—the contributors examine a host of matters centered on life, the body, and the subject as a living citizen. Altogether, they pay testament to the lasting relevance of biopower in some of our most important contemporary debates on issues ranging from health care rights to immigration laws, HIV prevention discourse, genomics medicine, and many other topics.
Contributors: Judith Revel, Antonio Negri, Catherine Mills, Ian Hacking, Mary-Beth Mader, Jeff Nealon, Eduardo Mendieta, Carlos Novas, Jana Sawicki, David Halperin, Todd May, Ladelle McWhorter, Martina Tazziolli, Frédéric Gros, Paul Patton, Nikolas Rose, Paul Rabinow, Roberto Esposito, Ann L. Stoler
effort to the critical examination of the work of each of these thinkers, but despite the strong biographical and philosophical connection between Foucault and Deleuze, very little has been done to explore the relationship between them. This special issue of Foucault Studies is the first collection of essays to address this critical deficit with a rigorous comparative discussion of the work of these two philosophers.
This collection of essays thus brings together both senior and junior scholars from diverse backgrounds to clarify the implications of this important philosophical encounter between Foucault and Deleuze.
Marco Altamirano’s essay focuses on the shared concepts of “milieu” and “machine,” in Deleuze and Foucault. Vernon W. Cisney’s essay defend’s a Deleuzian politics by drawing on an important political concept shared with Foucault: “becoming other.” William E. Connolly’s essay offers an exploration of creativity and the ambiguous role it plays in the understanding of freedom that we find in Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Foucault. Erin Gilson’s essay offers an original account of the shared methodology of “problematization” found in both
Deleuze and Foucault. Wendy Grace’s essay traces Deleuze and Foucault’s shared Nietzschean philosophical origins. Chris Penfield’s essay articulates a theory of “transversal politics”
common to both Deleuze and Foucault. Finally, Dianna Taylor’s essay compares the respective ontologies of Deleuze and Foucault.
Living Currency is the first English translation of Klossowski's La monnaie vivante. It offers an analysis of economic production as a mechanism of psychic production of desires and is a key work from this often overlooked but wonderfully creative French thinker.
2. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida: A Chronology - Alan Schrift
I. The History of Madness Debate
3. Cogito and the History of Madness - Jacques Derrida
4. My Body, This Paper, This Fire - Michel Foucault
5. ‘But Such People Are Insane’: On a Disputed Passage from the First Meditation - Jean-Marie Beyssade
6. A Return to Descartes’s First Meditation - Michel Foucault
7. Deconstruction, Care of the Self, Spirituality: Putting Foucault and Derrida to the Test - Edward McGushin
II. The End of Reason
8. The History of Historicity: The Critique of Reason in Foucault (and Derrida) - Amy Allen
9. "The End of Man: Foucault, Derrida, and the Auto-Bio-Graphical" - Ellen Armour
III. The Voice
10. ‘Murmurs’ and ‘Calls’: The Significance of Voice in the Political Reason of Foucault and Derrida - Fred Evans
11. “Let Others be Ends in themselves”: The Convergence between Foucault’s Parrēsia and Derrida’s Teleiopoesis - Leonard Lawlor
IV. The Placeless Place
12. The Aporia and the Problem - Paul Rekret
13. The Folded Unthought and the Irreducibly Unthinkable: Singularity, Multiplicity, and Materiality, in and between Foucault and Derrida - Arkady Plotnitsky
V. Crisis, Life and Death
14. Living and Dying with Foucault and Derrida: The Question of Biopower - Jeffrey T. Nealon
15. Philosophy on Trial: The Crisis of Deciding between Foucault and Derrida - Peter Gratton
The Deleuze Seminars by Nicolae Morar
of reason, things being judged as a function of a tribunal of reason. To do so, he invents a prodigious method called the critical method, the properly Kantian method. Deleuze admits finding all of this aspect of Kant quite horrible, but it's both fascination and horror because, for Deleuze, this is so ingenious. For Kant created an astonishing reversal of concepts: rather than time being derived from movement, Kant reverses the subordination, with movement henceforth depending on time, and thus, time ceasing to be circular and becoming a straight line. And late in his life, Kant introduces his conception of the Sublime, in which the fac- ulties enter into conflicts, having discordant accords, then reconciling, but no longer being subject to a tribunal. For Deleuze, then, Kant is clearly a great philosopher, with a whole undergirding in his works that makes Deleuze quite enthusiastic, on top of which is a sys- tem of judgment that Deleuze says he would like to do away with, but without standing in judgment.
Editorial Introductions by Nicolae Morar
Papers by Nicolae Morar
program in microbial ecology, which shows that if species richness is our major normative target, then we are faced with extraordinary ethical implications. This example challenges our well-received beliefs about biodiversity and it invites us to critically rethink the nature of this concept so that a more robust understanding of biodiversity and of its role in conservation policy could emerge.
This paper lays the groundwork for a research program in extended health. Drawing from work in microbiology and social and personality psychology, we develop and defend the Hypothesis of Extended Health (HEH), which denies the claim that health and disease states are predicated solely on the internal functioning of an organism. We contend that this view has profound and wide-ranging clinical implications. Namely, that the targets of medical invention and ethical concern are wider and more diverse than usually assumed.