Books

Philosophy & Legally Blonde. [Call for Abstracts for edited volume]
Style & Stigma: A horti(counter)cultural compost heap on bodies, shame, and the well-soiled soul. [Working manuscript of cross-over book]
Plato’s Bond of Love. [Manuscript under revision]

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Ware, Lauren and Lee John Whittington (2020). “‘The harvest of despair’: Catastrophic fear and the understanding of risk in the shadow of Mount Etna, Italy”, invited chapter in Waiting for the End of the World: New Perspectives on Natural Disasters in Medieval Europe, eds. Christopher M. Gerrard, Paolo Forlin, and Peter J. Brown (London: Routledge).
ABSTRACT. In this chapter, we offer an account of fear and risk in anticipation of catastrophe. We draw on the narrative response to the Mount Etna volcano in medieval Sicily to frame an evaluation of how fear can be seen to impact the understanding of risk when the event of that risk is the catastrophic suffering of an entire community. We hope to show how an exploration of the philosophical questions surrounding the emotion of fear and the understanding of risk can contribute to broader, interdisciplinary dialogue on the human experience of the disastrous and deadly.
Archer, Alfred and Lauren Ware (2018). “Beyond the Call of Beauty: Everyday Aesthetic Demands Under Patriarchy”, The Monist, Vol. 101, Issue 1: 114-127.
ABSTRACT. This paper defends two claims. First, we will argue for the existence of aesthetic demands in the realm of everyday aesthetics, and that these demands are not reducible to moral demands. Second, we will argue that we must recognise the limits of these demands in order to combat a widespread form of gendered oppression. The concept of aesthetic supererogation offers a new structural framework to understand both the pernicious nature of this oppression and what may be done to mitigate it.
- Selected for Oxford University Press’ Best of Recent Philosophy Scholarship 2018
- Nominated for the 2019 American Society for Aesthetics Ted Cohen Prize
Archer, Alfred and Lauren Ware (2017). “Aesthetic Supererogation”, Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 54: 102-116.
ABSTRACT. Many aestheticians and ethicists are interested in the similarities and connections between aesthetics and ethics (Nussbaum 1990; Foot 2002; Gaut 2007). One way in which some have suggested the two domains are different is that in ethics there exist obligations while in aesthetics there do not (Hampshire 1954). However, Marcia Muelder Eaton has argued that there is good reason to think that aesthetic obligations do exist (Eaton 2008). We will explore the nature of these obligations by asking whether acts of aesthetic supererogation (acts that go beyond the call of our aesthetic obligations) are possible. In this paper, we defend the thesis that there is good reason to think such acts exist.
Ware, Lauren (2016). “Emotions in the Evaluation of Legal Risk”, invited chapter in Law and Emotion, eds. Hilge Landweer and Dirk Koppelberg (Freiburg: Karl Alber Verlag), 249-277. Also in German as Recht und Emotion I: Verkannte Zusammenhänge.
ABSTRACT. The risks taken into account in legal decision-making are, often, matters of life and death, but the way we think about risk is flawed. This is a problem. The dominant account of how emotions are involved in risky decision-making follows the standard probabilistic account of risk. If we entertain a modal account of risk, however, this changes the way in which a host of legal actors—members of the jury, judges, defendants, lawyers, legislators, regulators, and police—ought to think about how emotions impact risk evaluation. In this chapter, I examine what taking a modal account of risk would mean for the way we understand emotions in the evaluation of legal risk: specifically, the risk of wrongful conviction
Ware, Lauren (2015). “Erotic Virtue”, Res Philosophica, Vol. 92, Issue 4: 915-935.
ABSTRACT. This paper defends an account of how erotic love works to develop virtue. It is argued that love drives moral development by holding the creation of virtue in the individual as the emotion’s intentional object. After analyzing the distinction between passive and active accounts of the object of love, this paper demonstrates that a Platonic virtue-ethical understanding of erotic love—far from being consumed with ascetic contemplation—offers a positive treatment of emotion’s role in the attainment and social practice of virtue.
Ware, Lauren (2014). “What Good is Love?”, Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, Vol. 34, Issue 2: 57-73.
ABSTRACT. The role of emotions in mental life is the subject of longstanding controversy, spanning ethics, moral psychology, and educational theory. This paper defends an account of love’s cognitive power. My starting point is Plato’s dialogue, the Symposium, in which we find the surprising claim that love aims at engendering moral virtue. I argue that this understanding affords love a crucial place in educational curricula, as engaging the emotions can motivate both cognitive achievement and moral development. I first outline the state of the challenge between dominant rival theories regarding emotions in learning. Next, I demonstrate how Platonic virtue ethics offers the most tenable prospect for an education of reason and emotion. Third, I sketch three practical ways educators might constructively engage emotions in the classroom. I conclude that love’s virtue is its peerless power to motivate the creative and lateral thinking which leads to moral development.

Working Papers

Commissioned critical review of Emotions in Plato (2020), eds. Laura Candiotto and Olivier Renault, for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
“Plato’s Bond of Love”
“Who’s Afraid of a Citizens’ Income?”
“Affective Imagination in Recidivism Risk Assessment”
“Emotional Suffering in Criminal Punishment”
“The Emotion Turn in Legal Philosophy”
“Appropriate Hate” (with Lee John Whittington)
“Erotic Precarity” (with Alison Duncan Kerr)
“On Bullshit Exams”

For my published popular writing, please see Media.