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Jeffrey Blustein

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Research Interests

  • Moral psychology, memory studies, normative and applied ethics, bioethics

Education

  • Ph.D. in Philosophy/Harvard University
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Affiliated Campus(es)

  • The City College of New York

Professor at City College chiefly working in the areas of moral psychology and memory studies.

Courses Recently Taught

  • Philosophy and the emotions
  • Philosophy of Memory
  • Moral Psychology
  • Ethics
  • Social and Political Philosophy
  • Biomedical Ethics

Professional Affiliations and Memberships

  • American Philosophy Association
  • Memory Studies Association
  • Hastings Center
  • New York Academy of Medicine
  • International Association of Genocide Scholars

Recent Books

  • Forgiveness and Remembrance: Remembering Wrongdoing in Personal and Public Life (Oxford, 2014)
  • The Moral Demands of Memory (Cambridge, 2008)

Publications

  • Bridging the Gap Between the Social Science and the Social Ontology of Collective Memory,” Memory Studies, DOI: 10.1177/175069801i9876081. 2019.

  • “Traumatic Emotions,” in T. Brudholm and J. Lang (eds.) Emotions and Mass Atrocity. Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 234-261.

  • “Forgiveness and the Moral Psychology of Sadness,” in A. Gotlib (ed.) The Moral Psychology of Sadness. Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, pp. 117-152.

  • “Conceptions of Genocide and the Ethics of Memorialization,” in A. Marsoobian, J. Lindert (eds.) Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Genocide and Memory. Springer, 2018, pp. 21-47.

  • “A Duty to Remember,” in S. Bernecker and K. Michaelian (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, 2017, pp. 351-363.

  • “On the Moral Value of Rescue and Remembering Rescuers,” in M. Esparza and C. de Ycaza (eds.) Remembering the Rescuers of Victims of Human Rights Crimes in Latin America. Lexington, 2017, pp. 165-180.

  • “How the Past Matters: On the Foundations of an Ethics of Remembrance,” in K. Neumann and J. Thompson (eds.) Historical Memory and Justice. University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, pp. 74-92.

  • “Doing the Best for One’s Child: Satisficing vs. Optimizing Parentalism,” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 2012.

  • “Human Rights and the Internationalization of Memory,” Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 43, no. 1, Spring 2012: 19-32.

  • “Forgiveness, Commemoration, and Restorative Justice,” Metaphilosophy, vol. 4, no. 4 , July 2010: 582-617.

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Affiliated Campus(es)

  • The City College of New York

Books

Forgiveness and Remembrance Remembering Wrongdoing in Personal and Public Life Jeffrey M. Blustein

Forgiveness and Remembrance: Remembering Wrongdoing in Personal and Public Life

by Jeffrey Blustein Professor, Philosophy

This book examines the complex moral psychology of forgiving, remembering, and forgetting in personal and political contexts. It challenges a number of entrenched ideas that pervade standard philosophical approaches to interpersonal forgiveness and offers an original account of its moral psychology and the emotions involved in it. The author also uses this account to illuminate the relationship of forgiveness to political reconciliation. Memory is another central concern that flows from this; in its political function, memory of wrongdoing-and of its victims-is embodied in processes of memorialization. Blustein examines the symbolism and the symbolic moral significance of memorialization as a political practice, reflects on its relationship to forgiveness, and, finally, argues that there are moral responsibilities associated with memorialization that belong to international actors as well as to states. 

Published June 2014
Oxford University Press, 2014

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