It has been claimed that most of the world’s preventable suffering and death are caused not by terrorism but by poverty. That claim, if true, could be hard to substantiate. For most terrorism is not publicly recognized as such, and it is far commoner than paradigms of the usual suspects suggest. Everyday lives under oppressive regimes, in racist environments, and of women, children, and elders everywhere who suffer violence in their homes offer instances of terrorisms that seldom capture public attention. Or so this essay argues, through exploring two models of terrorism and the points of view highlighted by each.

Although the exclusion of LGBTs from the rites and rights of marriage is arbitrary and unjust, the legal institution of marriage is itself so riddled with injustice that it would be better to create alternative forms of durable intimate partnership that do not invoke the power of the state. Card's essay develops a case for this position, taking up an injustice sufficiently serious to constitute an evil: the sheltering of domestic violence.

In the jargon of today's mainstream mass media, 'liberal' has become the L word and 'feminist' has become the F word. This co-opting of L and F trades on public squeamishness regarding the designations of earlier, and blunter, L and F words. 'Liberal' and 'feminist' are being shooed toward closets formerly inhabited by 'lesbian' and 'fuck'--words that liberals (in the case of 'fuck') and feminists (in the case of 'lesbian') worked so enthusiastically to bring out of the closet in the second half of the twentieth century. What an interesting reversal, this move to closet the outers! Revenge, perhaps? An aspect of the revenge: closeting them together? 'Liberal' and 'feminist' often sit uneasily in proximity to one another. Yet in the current reactionary political climate, uneasiness regarding 'liberal' should be problematic for feminists. Readers of this journal need no prodding to resist the closeting of 'feminist.' About 'liberal,' the case is less clear. 'Liberal' receives a load of flack from the political left as well as from the right. Feminist philosophers have contributed substantial flack from the left. Closets are a foreseeable outcome of the creation of a derogatory, scornful aura around a concept, investing it with an emotive load that can easily embarrass any who might find the concept applicable to themselves. (First Paragraph)

Simone de Beauvoir was a philosopher and writer of notable range and influence whose work is central to feminist theory, French existentialism, and contemporary moral and social philosophy. The essays in this volume examine the major aspects of her thought. They explore her views on the role of biology, sexuality and sexual difference, and evil; the influence on her work of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, and others; and the philosophical significance of her memoirs and fiction.

Social death, central to the evil of genocide (whether the genocide is homicidal or primarily cultural), distinguishes genocide from other mass murders. Loss of social vitality is loss of identity and thereby of meaning for one's existence. Seeing social death at the center of genocide takes our focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to the development of talents.

The concept of a war on terrorism creates havoc with attempts to apply rules of war. For "terrorism" is not an agent. Nor is it clear what relationship to terrorism agents must have in order to be legitimate targets. Nor is it clear what kinds of terrorism count. Would a war on terrorism in the home be a justifiable response to domestic battering? If not, do similar objections apply to a war on public terrorism?

Margaret Walker's Moral Understandings offers an "expressive-collaborative," culturally situated, practice-based picture of morality, critical of a "theoretical-juridical" picture in most prefeminist moral philosophy since Henry Sidgwick. This essay compares her approach to ethics with that of John Rawls, another exemplar of the "theoretical-juridical" model, and asks how Walker's approach would apply to several ethical issues, including interaction with (other) animals, social reform and revolution, and basic human rights.

Gray zones, which develop wherever oppression is severe and lasting, are inhabited by victims of evil who become complicit in perpetrating on others the evils that threaten to engulf themselves. Women, who have inhabited many gray zones, present challenges for feminist theorists, who have long struggled with how resistance is possible under coercive institutions. Building on Primo Levi's reflections on the gray zone in Nazi death camps and ghettos, this essay argues that resistance is sometimes possible, although outsiders are rarely, if ever, in a position to judge when. It also raises questions about the adequacy of ordinary moral concepts to mark the distinctions that would be helpful for thinking about how to respond in a gray zone.

In this paper I defend the view that opposition to inequalities is less essential to feminism than opposition to evils, and that it is not fruitful to try to recast the concern to address evils as a concern with fundamental equality. My position is not that inequalities are unimportant, but that when it comes to prioritizing, evils are more important.

James Sterba's book 'Justice for Here and Now' applies a peace-making approach to many contemporary controversies in social justice, including issues of feminism and homosexuality. He argues for family and workplace restructuring as means to enabling women and men alike to develop all the virtues of good human beings. An alternative to Sterba's strategy, perhaps more likely to achieve that end, questions the practice of heterosexual cohabitation and encourages same sex households. This essay develops and defends that alternative.

Martha Nussbaum's work has been characterized by a sustained critique of Stoic ethics, insofar as that ethics denies the validity and importance of our valuing things that elude our control. This essay explores the idea that the very possibility of morality, understood as social or interpersonal ethics, presupposes that we do value such things. If my argument is right, Stoic ethics is unable to recognize the validity of morality (so understood) but can at most acknowledge duties to oneself. A further implication is that moral luck, so far from undermining morality as some have held, is presupposed by the very possibility of morality.

Cheshire Calhoun has been working to distinguish lesbian oppression from the sexist oppression of women in general, with the idea that different strategies may be needed to oppose each. On a radical feminist understanding of sexism, however, lesbian oppression is a very important part of the oppression of females generally. Women's liberation requires opposition to lesbian oppression. Or so I argue in supporting radicalesbianfeminism as a unified theory.

This essay examines how rape of women and girls by male soldiers works as a martial weapon. Continuities with other torture and terrorism and with civilian rape are suggested. The inadequacy of past philosophical treatments of the enslavement of war captives is briefly discussed. Social strategies are suggested for responding and a concluding fantasy offered, not entirely social, of a strategy to change the meanings of rape to undermine its use as a martial weapon.

The opportunities to become a good person are not the same for everyone. Modern European ethical theory, especially Kantian ethics, assumes the same virtues are accessible to all who are capable of rational choice. Character development, however, is affected by circumstances, such as those of wealth and socially constructed categories of gender, race, and sexual orientation, which introduce factors beyond the control of individuals. Implications of these influences for morality have, since the work of Williams and Nagel in the seventies, raised questions in philosophy about the concept of moral luck. In The Unnatural Lottery, Claudia Card examines how luck enters into moral character and considers how some of those who are oppressed can develop responsibility. Luck is often best appreciated by those who have known relatively bad luck and have been unable to escape steady comparison of their lot with those of others. The author takes as her paradigms the luck of middle and lower classes of women who face violence and exploitation, of lesbians who face continuing pressure to hide or self-destruct, of culturally Christian whites who have ethnic privilege, and of adult survivors of child abuse. How have such people been affected by luck in who they are and can become, the good lives available to them, the evils they may be liable to embody? Other philosophers have explored the luck of those who begin from privileged positions and then suffer reversals of fortune. Claudia Card focuses on the more common cases of those who begin from socially disadvantaged positions, and she considers some who find their good luck troubling when its source is the unnatural lottery of social injustice. (book overview)

This article examines reasons for university involvement in protesting ROTC policies discriminatory toward lesbians and gay men. The formal exclusion of lesbians and gay men from the military permits not only the abuses in selective enforcement of the policy and considerable economic costs to maintain it, but also contributes to the perpetuation of the closet. Closeting is not a phenomenon chosen by lesbians and gay men for reasons of their own, and it rewards deceit, penalizes honesty, blames lesbians and gays for the mistrust of others, and effects a psychological division ("doubling") of individual identity and corrupts individual responsibility. For these reasons, university educators, as committed to the advance of truth, have an obligation to protest ROTC compliance with discriminatory policies.

The present state of philosophical consciousness of histories of racism, sexism, and class oppression indicate a need to remove veils of ignorance rather than to don them. Two trends reflecting sensitivity to this need are 'holism' and 'particularism' in recent philosophy by women and others who do not necessarily trace their intellectual heritages to men of ancient Greece. These trends and their interrelationships are examined and defended.

Suzanne Pharr's Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism may be an effective tool for women committed to overcoming their own homophobia who want practical advice on recognizing and eradicating it, although as an essay in theory it does not advance the issues. The author seems unaware that Celia Kitzinger has argued recently that "homophobia" is not a helpful concept because it individualizes problems better seen as political and begs the question of the rationality of the fear. I argue that "homophobia" has been misused but that freed of the medical model and understood in connection with issues of pride and shame, it can be a helpful concept.

Nel Noddings, in Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984), presents and develops an ethic of care as an alternative to an ethic that treats justice as a bask concept. I argue that this care ethic is unable to give an adequate account of ethical relationships between strangers and that it is also in danger of valorizing relationships in which carers are seriously abused.

The ethics of friendship requires clarification of the relationships between gratitude and obligation. The paradox in the idea of a debt of gratitude is unraveled by means of a distinction between two paradigms of obligation: the debtor paradigm and the trustee paradigm. Kant's and Aristotle's views on the obligations incurred to a benefactor are rejected in favor of Hobbes's on the ground that only Hobbes's account remains congruent with the spirit of gratitude. The trustee model of obligation is then used to clarify misplaced gratitude, especially in relationships of unequal power.