N. Scott Arnold has argued forcefully that, for the most part, those who win profits (and suffer losses) in a market economy deserve them. According to Arnold, profit opportunities arise when there are malallocations of resources, which entrepreneurs initiate changes in production to correct. If they succeed, they simultaneously further the essential point of the market system — to meet the needs and wants of consumers — and they make profits; if they do not, then they stand to suffer losses. (...) I argue that the structure of modern corporate enterprises tends to channel income into the hands of those whose entrepreneurial contribution is diminishingly small — namely stockholders — and away from those within the firm who genuinely participate in the entrepreneurial role. (shrink)

This philosophical investigation interrogates the relationship between G.W.F. Hegel’s concept of the master-slave dialectic in The Phenomenology of Spirit and the critique and reformulation of it by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks. As a means of contextualization and expansion of Hegel’s original textual account, I consider Susan Buck-Morss’ seminal defense through grounding the dialectic in Hegel’s possible historical knowledge of the Haitian Revolution. I maintain that despite a compelling picture, Buck-Morss’ insights are unable to fully vindicate Hegel from (...) the rebukes of Fanon, and as a result, Hegel’s phenomenology necessitates a concrete analysis of the actual conscious experiences of the racialized and colonized subject in order to realize its aims. In pursuit of this critical methodology, I develop the upshot and positive movement of Fanon’s critique through what I describe as a “phenomenology of flesh” in conversation with Maurice Merleau Ponty’s The Visible and the Invisible. (shrink)

From a psychological point of view, human wants and desires form a multitiered structure. If values are related in any way to human affectivity or desire - and this is something most maximizing theorists would certainly not dispute - then we are forced to recognize that human values also form a multi-tiered structure. Failure to appreciate this connection leads maximization theorists seriously astray, both in their interpretation of human behavior and in their postulates of rationality. Optimizing involves satisficing, not strictly (...) maximization; satisficing is truly rational. (shrink)