Damian Cox

Bond University, Faculty of Society & Design, Faculty Member

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I teach at philosophy Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia. I have had appointments at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia and the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. My areas of specialisation are virtue ethics, emotions and film philosophy.

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Papers by Damian Cox

Pragmatism and Progress

SUNY Press eBooks, Mar 25, 2019

Integrity and the University

Philosophy of Management, Oct 25, 2023

Sovereignty, Violence and the State of Exception

So far we have considered a number of dimensions to what we have seen as a new political paradigm... more So far we have considered a number of dimensions to what we have seen as a new political paradigm that is emerging with the ‘war on terror’. The first of these has been the politics of security — that is, the overwhelming obsession with security that has come to dominate our societies. As we have shown, however, not only does the deliberate vagueness and permeability of idea of ‘security’ lead to greater insecurity — in both real and psychological terms — it also seriously undermines democratic politics by restricting spaces for autonomy, freedom and political agency. The second of these dimensions has been the resurgence — or at least a re-articulation — of religious fundamentalism and racial intolerance, not only in the Islamic world, but also here in our supposedly secular West. Thus, it also poses a threat to liberal democratic politics, which relies upon a clear separation between the political and the religious. The third element of this paradigm has been the cynical manipulation of the truth — or downright lying — that has come to be a feature of contemporary political life. This lack of accountability — and, more worryingly, people’s apparent complacency in the face of the lies and distortions of their political leaders — also suggests a profound debilitation of democratic politics.

On the Value of Moral Failure

Psychoanalysis and Film

Psychoanalysis and Film Those who believe that the psychoanalytic understanding of human nature i... more Psychoanalysis and Film Those who believe that the psychoanalytic understanding of human nature is broadly correct will also likely believe that there are essential aspects of film that cannot be adequately understood without it. Among these are (i) film's power; (ii) the nature of film spectatorship; and (iii) the characteristics of specific films and genres. Why are we attracted to certain kinds of films-horror films and those depicting violence we abhor? The most basic claim underlying psychoanalytic approaches to film is that the creation and experience of film is driven by desire and wish-fulfilment and functions to satisfy certain psychological, protective, expressive needs of artists and audiences. Psychoanalytic explorations of film tend to draw together aspects of artistic creation and spectatorship, as well as accounts of film's power to move audiences and the nature of film spectatorship in general-the affective and cognitive significance of the nature of film experience itself.

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Philosophy of emotion Volume 2

Philosophical Psychology, Jun 15, 2019

Agency, explanation and ethics in international relations

Religion, Prejudice, Violence and Politics

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2009

When it comes to everyday discourse about political agency, there is a disturbing asymmetry betwe... more When it comes to everyday discourse about political agency, there is a disturbing asymmetry between the kinds of explanation that tend to be offered of one’s own group and those offered of foreign or enemy groups. The actions and motivations of political actors in one’s own camp, say Western politicians, tend to be rationalized and understood in terms of straightforward, even if not always wholly lucid or laudable, cognitive goals. Beliefs and principles are generally assumed to be the chief motivating features here, and so explanations of actions, including acts of horrendous violence, have to refer to these. The underlying supposition of Western popular discourse on US policy in Iraq, for example, seems to be that no matter how ill-planned it has been, there could be no reason for the invasion of Iraq other than destroying weapons allegedly already present, or forestalling the development of weapons of mass destruction by an unwholesome and dangerous dictator or helping the Iraqis to free themselves of a tyrannical regime. These are often taken as laudable — or at least perfectly understandable — goals and as central to explaining, if not justifying, US action. Even if the strategy for achieving them is seen as misguided, the intention of the strategy at least makes sense.

On Ways Forward

The previous chapter explored some of the ethical and political tensions central to liberal democ... more The previous chapter explored some of the ethical and political tensions central to liberal democracy — tensions highlighted in Ignatieff’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to reconcile liberal democratic principles and institutions with various forms of state violence and coercion in response to the threat of terrorism. Unlike Ignatieff, we have argued that enhanced security measures and military responses to terrorism, right up to extra-judicial detention, targeted assassination and preventive wars — all of which Ignatieff allows under his ethics of the ‘lesser evil’ — cannot be enacted without doing major damage to the very liberal democratic principles in defence of which these measures are supposedly taken. Neither the slippery logic of the ‘lesser evil’, nor blind faith in judicial scrutiny and adversarial review, gets around this problem. We are left in a quandary: what would be an ethically and politically legitimate response to terrorism?

Lying in the War on Terrorism

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2009

This chapter deals with an issue not much dealt with in the literature on terror — that of lying.... more This chapter deals with an issue not much dealt with in the literature on terror — that of lying. It may at first seem a background or preliminary problem. It proves, however, to be very much at the centre of what has happened to politics as it responds to terrorism. It underpins a subversion of discourses on terror, tolerance and democracy, as well as means/ends thinking and a distortion of moral judgment. Lying and other forms of mendacity undermine freedom and democratic politics.1 More than violence and terrorism itself (though deception and lying are directly related to these) it threatens the future viability of liberal democracy — not just as a polity but also as a way of thinking. It raises the question of whether so-called Western democracies, formally or substantively considered, can properly be regarded as democracies at all.2 The overly insistent idea — used like some school motto — that it is terrorism and violence that threaten Western democracies rather than lies and deceit, is best seen as a subterfuge and projective form of defence. This kind of lying, like excessive self-deception and hypocrisy, is self-propagating and proliferate. Here on a local level at least, Kant’s notion that the practice of lying as a matter of course is self-defeating in that it undermines the possibility of any meaningful discourse whatsoever seems to hold.

Integrity, Commitment, and Indirect Consequentialism

Journal of Value Inquiry, Mar 1, 2005

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The Lesser of Two Terrors: Ethical Questions

Political responses to terror have to be understood in context of the kinds of prejudice and irra... more Political responses to terror have to be understood in context of the kinds of prejudice and irrationality that underlie and mar relations between Western and non-Western cultures. But do orthodox liberal democratic conceptions of political justice and good political practice have the resources to combat these prejudices and their role in the formation of political judgement? Reflection on political responses to terror must also acknowledge the remarkable failures and moral obscenities that have issued from the response to terror. Do orthodox liberal democratic conceptions of political justice and good political practice have the resources to understand and respond to these failures? Is the moral failure of the ‘war on terror’ the result of the unlucky fact that administrations in the US and Britain just happened to have been mendacious in their accounts of the reasons for war and overconfident in their prosecution of it? Or does the moral failure of the ‘war on terror’ uncover deep inadequacies in the way politics is normally done in liberal democracies? More central to our concerns: is the moral failure of the ‘war on terror’ a sign of some deep failure in liberal democratic conceptions of politics?

War and violence: The problem of teaching the like-minded

ABSTRACT Extract:The article discusses objections regarding the inclusion of Peace Studies in the... more ABSTRACT Extract:The article discusses objections regarding the inclusion of Peace Studies in the university curriculum. The earliest objection contested that there was no need for Peace Studies to be introduced because the supposed coverage of the subject could be better accomplished within the well-established humanities disciplines. The second objection was aimed at the nature of the field itself. The concept of objectivity and like-mindedness is also discussed.

October and the question of cinematic thinking

Screening the Past, Dec 25, 2013

This Journal Article is brought to you by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at ePubli... more This Journal Article is brought to you by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at ePublications@bond. It has been accepted for inclusion in Humanities & Social Sciences papers by an authorized administrator of ePublications@bond. For more information, please contact Bond University's Repository Coordinator. Recommended Citation Damian Cox. (2013) "October and the question of cinematic thinking" ,, : ISSN 1328-9756.

Diagnosis without treatment: responding to the War on Terror

South African Journal of Philosophy, Jan 2, 2014

ABSTRACT The War on Terror has exposed deep problems within contemporary political practice. It h... more ABSTRACT The War on Terror has exposed deep problems within contemporary political practice. It has demonstrated the moral fragility of liberal democracy. Much critical literature on the topic is devoted to uncovering the sources of this fragility. In this paper, we accept the general thrust of much of this literature, but turn our attention to the practical upshot of the criticism. A common feature of the literature is that, when it comes to offering remedies of the problems it identifies, what is offered is ‘diagnosis without treatment’. The negation of a problem is regarded as a solution. For example, if the problem is that the USA is not acting as a good international citizen, the solution is that it begins to act as such. This is like a doctor diagnosing gout and recommending to the patient that they reduce the level of uric acid in their big toe. We argue that diagnosis without treatment is endemic in literature on the War on Terror and the ills of liberal democracy. We divide this literature into five categories and examine representative works in each. At the end of the paper, we describe what is required to avoid offering yet more diagnosis without treatment.

American Empire and its Discontents

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2009

I am just so amazed that there is so much misunderstanding of what our country is about, that peo... more I am just so amazed that there is so much misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us….like most Americans, I just can't believe it, because I know how good we are.-George W. Bush The ancient tale of Damocles conveys a lesson often overlooked in the conduct of present-day international affairs-a lesson that warrants heeding especially now, given the global euphoria attending the transfer of power in Washington from the much-loathed George W. Bush to the much-loved Barack Obama. The lesson is this: that great power cannot fail but to bring grave danger to its possessor. As Damocles learned the hard way, great power fails to bring perpetual and blissful security and peace to the one yielding it. A more frequent and far more disturbing by-product of great power is the constant and unavoidable danger of being the target of choice for the hostility of those less well endowed. Rather than constituting a blessing, great power comes with the terrible curse of never-ending enmity. As the Romans, the Britons, and now the Americans have found out time and again, any variety of pax, be it Romana, Britannica, or Americana,

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“I am not living next door to no zombie”: Posthumans and Prejudice

Critical philosophy of race, Mar 1, 2016

Posthumanist film and television is both a vehicle for reflection on discrimination and prejudice... more Posthumanist film and television is both a vehicle for reflection on discrimination and prejudice and a means of gratifying in fantasy deeply imbedded human impulses towards prejudice. Discrimination lies at the heart of posthuman narratives whenever the posthuman coalesces around an identifiable group in conflict with humans. We first introduce the idea of prejudice as a form of psychological defense, contrasting it with other accounts of prejudice in the philosophical literature. We then apply this notion to number of posthumanist film and television narratives. An adequate account of prejudice tells us about posthumanism in film—the significance of posthumanist thinking, speculation and fantasy. It helps account for the proliferation of television series and films about people who—being at one time dead, still dead or partially dead, or only sometimes dead, or have powers and appetites we do not have—are borderline creatures: not fully us, but still near to us.

Music and Ethics

Oxford University Press eBooks, Feb 11, 2016

This essay examines the relationship between music and ethics. Can music have a positive or negat... more This essay examines the relationship between music and ethics. Can music have a positive or negative role in our disposition toward, or performance of, right and wrong acts, duties, and virtues? Can it make a difference to us morally? Can musical experience make us better or worse off from a moral point of view? It is argued that although there is no necessary connection between listening to or appreciating music and one’s moral character, the contingent connections are many and various. Kivy’s critique of the character-building force of absolute music is examined and rejected. If music possesses epistemic and behavioral moral force, then it possesses—for some people, some of the time—the power to build moral character. If music enlarges our capacities of emotional empathy (not for everyone, or all music, and not on all occasions), then it has a role to play in building moral character.

Avatar: racism and prejudice on Pandora

Introduction: Philosophical Approaches to Race in Film Dan Flory and Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo Epi... more Introduction: Philosophical Approaches to Race in Film Dan Flory and Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo Epistemology 1. Imaginative Resistance and the White Gaze in Machete and The Help Dan Flory 2. Born into Bondage: Teaching The Matrix and Unlearning the Racial Organization of Knowledge Michael Eng 3. What's So Bad About Blackface? Christy Mag Uidhir Aesthetics 4. So Now You're Swedish American?': Jewish-American Women, Philosophies of Beauty in Requiem for a Dream Renee R. Curry and William Brigham 5.Cruising Through Race Monique Roelofs Moral Philosophy 6. True Blood and Race: From Progress to Complacency to Paganism, to Humanity Naomi Zack 7. Avatar: Racism and Prejudice on Pandora Michael P. Levine and Damian Cox 8. "Now, Imagine She's White": The Gift of the Black Gaze and the Re-Inscription of Whiteness as Normative in A Time to Kill George Yancy Social and Political Philosophy 9. Race As/And (Ex)change: Trading Places and the Rise of Neo-Liberalism Charles W. Mills 10. Hardly Black and White: Racial and Sexual Stereotypes in Manderlay and Black Snake Moan Melanie Walton 11. Elisions of Race and Stories of Progress: Planet 51 and The Princess and the Frog Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo and Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo Technology and the (Lived) Body 12.Vampires, Technology, and Racism: The Vampiric Image in Twilight and Let Me In Brian H. Onishi 13. Desperate Black Female: Sex and Race in Monster's Ball Lucy Bolton

Moral beauty in the cinema of the Dardenne brothers

Screening the Past, Dec 21, 2016

Damian Cox

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