The Ethics of Social Distance and Proximity in the City
Tea Lobo, “The Ethics of Social Distance and Proximity in the City,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 77, no. 2–3 (2021): 995–1004, https://doi.org/10.17990/RPF/2021_77_2_0995.
Tea Lobo, “The Ethics of Social Distance and Proximity in the City,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 77, no. 2–3 (2021): 995–1004, https://doi.org/10.17990/RPF/2021_77_2_0995.
Type | Journal Article |
---|---|
Author | Tea Lobo |
Rights | © 2021 by Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia |
Volume | 77 |
Issue | 2-3 |
Pages | 995-1004 |
Publication | Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia |
ISSN | 0870-5283 |
Date | 2021 |
DOI | 10.17990/RPF/2021_77_2_0995 |
Language | English |
Abstract | The genealogy of ethics starts in the polis. Plato and Aristotle had an optimistic view of polis life, even though Plato was born shortly after the plague of Athens, an experience that left a deep imprint in his society, and interestingly not a very good opinion of democracy. The idea of the polis as the ideal locus for human flourishing can be contested because we do not share the same face-to-face form of life with the ancient polis-dwellers. Contemporary megacities do not harbor an agora in which citizens debate current affairs. Such debates have shifted to social media. It is worth investigating the value of face-to-face interaction even today. Despite the risk of spreading airborne lung diseases like the Corona virus, the possibility of face-to-face interactions allows the cultivation of attention necessary for ethics. Knowing your neighbor by acquaintance, seeing her face every day can make pedestrians better attuned to the need to protect her in times of the pandemic, by maintaining distance and wearing a mask. If this is indeed the case, then it has implications for urban design: urban density can be designed in a way that affords functional proximity (the likelihood of encounters) and more humane neighborhoods. |
Date Added | 9/10/2021, 5:12:34 PM |
Modified | 9/10/2021, 6:37:09 PM |
Aristotle. Politics. London: Longmans, Green, and co, 1877.
Boyer, Christine M. “Aviation and the Aerial View: Le Corbusier’s Spatial Transformations in the 1930s and 1940s.” Diacritics 33, no. 3/4, (2003): 93-116.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “Site Effects.” In The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Dewey, John. “Creative Democracy – The Task Before Us.“ In: The Essential Dewey. Vol. 1. Pragmatism, Education, Democracy, edited by Larry A. Hickmann and Thomas M. Alexander, 340-344. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998.
Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. The Public and Its Problems. In: The Later Works, 1925-1927, edited by Jo Ann Boydston and Bridget A. Walsh. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988.
Dietz, Leslie, Patrick F. Horve, David A. Coil, Mark Fretz, Jonathan A. Eisen, Kevin van den Wymelenberg. “2019 Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic: Built Environment Considerations to Reduce Transmission.“ mSystems 5, no. 2 (2020.), e00245-20.
Engels, Friedrich. The Conditions of the Working Class in England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Floridi, Luciano. “Infraethics – on the Conditions of Possibility of Morality.” Philosophy & Technology 30, (2017): 391-394.
Hillier, Bill and Laura Vaughan. “The City as One Thing.” Progress in Planning 67, no. 3 (2007): 205-230.
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. London: Penguin Books, 1972.
Klinenberg, Eric. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Le Corbusier. La ville radieuse: éléments d’une doctrine d’urbanisme pour l’équipement de la civilisation machiniste : Paris, Genève, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Montevideo, Buenos-Aires, Alger, Moscou, Anvers, Barcelone, Stockholm, Nemours, Piace. Boulogne : Ed. de l’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, 1935.
Lefebvre, Henri. Droit à la ville. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2009.
Lefebvre, Henri. “La production de l’espace.” L’homme et la société. Revue internatioanle de recherches et de syntheses sociologiques 31-32 (1974): 15-32.
Levinas, Emmanuel. “Ethics as First Philosophy.” In: The Levinas Reader, edited by Sean Hand, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989, 75–87.
Löw, Martina. Vom Raum aus die Stadt denken. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2018.
Müller, Oliver. “Warum »autonome« Waffensysteme Gegenstand der Philosophie sein sollten.“ Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Vol. 44, no. 3 (2019).
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. “Der griechische Staat.“ Aufsätze und Vorreden aus dem Nachlaß. Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1921.
Nida-Rümelin, Julian. “Philosophie und Stadt.” Forum Stadt. Vierteljahreszeitschrift für Stadtgeschichte, Stadtsoziologie, Denkmalpflege und Stadtentwicklung. Philosophie der Stadt 43, 4, (2016): 329-346.
Novakovic, Stefan. “Will Covid-19 Spell the End of Urban Density? Don’t Bet on It.” Azure Magazine 29 March 2020. https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/will-covid-19-spell-the-end-of-urban-density-dont-bet-on-it/. Accessed 24 April 2020.
Ober, Josiah. Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Plato. Republic [Politeia], Volume I: Books 1-5, edited and translated by Christopher Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy. Loeb Classical Library 237. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
Psarra, Sophia. Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning. London: Routledge, 2009.
Reis, H. T. “Propinquity.” In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social psychology. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2007.
Schwarte, Ludger. “Gründen und Abreißen. Der Platz der Architektur im System der Philosophie.” In Architektur und Philosophie. Grundlagen, Standpunkte, Perspektiven, edited by Jörg H. Gleiter and Ludger Schwarte. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2015, 21-38.
Schwarte, Ludger. Philosophie der Architektur. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009.
Scott, James C. Against the Grain. A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2017.
Simmel, Georg. The Metropolis and the Mental Life. In The Blackwell City Reader, edited by G. Bridge and S. Watson. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002, 11-19.
Simmel, Georg. „Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben.“ Aufsätze und Abhandlungen 1901-1908. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995.
Söderström, O., Paasche, T., Klauser, F. Smart Cities as Corporate Storytelling. City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 18, no. 3, (2014): 307-320.
Stoekl, Alan. “Solar Le Corbusier.” In Philosophy and the City: Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Perspectives, edited by Keith Jacobs and Jeff Malpas. London: Roman & Littlefield, 2019.
Taylor, Charles. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Hillier, Bill and Laura Vaughan. “The City as One Thing.” Progress in Planning 67, no. 3, (2007): 205-230.
Vaughan, Laura. Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography. London: University of London Press, 2018.
Volchenkov, D. and P. Blanchard. “Ghetto of Venice: Access to the Target Node and the Random Target Access Time.“ Physics and Society (2007), https:// arxiv.org/ abs/ 0710.3021, Accessed 6 May 2021.
Williams, James. Stand out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Wolff, Jonathan. Ethics and Public Policy: A Philosophical Inquiry. London: Routledge, 2011.
Wolff, Jonathan. “Inequality and the City.” Talk at University of Bern, 6 December 2018.
Wolff, Jonathan and Avner de-Shalit. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.