Peggy DesAutels, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton, will speak on Thursday April 9 at 4:00 PM in Room 202 of the Ford Alumni Center. The title of Dr. DesAutels’s talk is “Non-Idealized Approaches to Ethics and Power.”

Abstract: In this talk, Peggy DesAutels provides non-idealized moral norms for resisting abuses of power. She avoids conceiving of persons as abstract individuals with assumed social equality. Instead, she focuses on realistic and non-idealized persons who are embedded in social hierarchies that may well include relations of structural domination, exploitation, coercive control, and oppression. She examines the virtues needed to resist abuses of organizational power and interpersonal coercive control and argues that it is especially important for virtuous resisters to familiarize themselves with and expect a full range of harsh retaliatory measures. She draws on research on the psychologies of abusers of power and on recounted experiences tied to resisting power in academic institutions and resisting coercive control in intimate relationships. She concludes that a virtuous resister of those abusing power must be as strategic as possible to preserve her own physical and psychological health while at the same time knowingly risking both in liberatory struggles.

Power Poster

For more information, please contact Rocío Zambrana (zambrana@uoregon.edu).