What am I reading in ScholarWorks? August 2023

Jessica Ryan, Scholarly Communications Librarian, highlights an item in ScholarWorks each month.

I have always found that a good scholar is a careful scholar. The care that the discipline of philosophy takes to look—from many angles— at the most basic building blocks of an idea is humbling and helps me to ground my thoughts and slow down an emotion-laden response. Take a word like wellbeing, we might all think we know what that means when use of the word is employed in casual conversation or to build an argument, sell a diet plan, or advocate for genetic enhancement, but a careful philosopher is not casual with words. A careful philosopher will unpack our assumptions, temper our hot takes, and bring clarity to the complexity.

Professor of Philosophy Susan Levin is such a philosopher and her work on the bioethics of transhumanism give us an opportunity to really take seriously the implications of a concept as simple-sounding as wellness. For this month’s What am I Reading in ScholarWorks I encourage you to let Professor Levin be your guide in deconstructing terms, frameworks, and arguments that are being used to further an argument that, once meticulously examined, exposes certain societal and personal assumptions and implications about wellness, normalcy, and theories of welfarism. Enjoy: “A World of Difference: The Fundamental Opposition between Transhumanist “Welfarism” and Disability Advocacy.”    

To read this work in Smith ScholarWorks, visit: https://scholarworks.smith.edu/phi_facpubs/57/

What is ScholarWorks?

Smith ScholarWorks is Smith’s institutional repository of digital scholarship and research materials created and curated by faculty, students, and staff at Smith College. Browse by collections, disciplines, and authors.