Prometheus Undergraduate Philosophy Journal

Volume 14 of Prometheus: The Johns Hopkins University Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy is here! This year, we are happy to present five papers from students attending universities across the United States. We would like to thank the authors for their insightful papers, the Prometheus Editors for reviewing the submissions, the multiple graduate students for assisting in the review process, and our advisor Cara Cummings who guided us through the publication process. In addition, this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the philosophy departments who shared the call for papers and those who submitted papers. Thank you all for those who helped create this new edition of Prometheus, and we hope you enjoy the wonderful essays within! 

Process of Reviewing:
The papers were blind-reviewed, meaning that authors were asked to eliminate all identificatory information and the reviewers did not have any information about the author when reading the papers. When reviewing a paper submitted by a member of the editorial board, we ensured that that particular paper was reviewed by other members of the editorial board.

Without further ado, here is the journal:

Congratulations to Madeleine Schmitz and Damon Choi for being the new president and vice president of Prometheus! Further updates and new members of the Prometheus board will be updated in the fall, but thank you to all 2021-2022 board members:

Graduate Advisor: Cara Cummings

President: Lawrence Cao

Board Members: Madeleine Schmitz, Damon Choi, Jonas Zhai, Nhat Tran, Demi Liu, Jacky Hu, Clara Kraft, Shourya Arashanapalli

Some of the images from the 2022 Mid-Atlantic Conference can be seen below. Thank you once again to all who came to the 2022 Mid-Atlantic Undergraduate Philosophy Conference on April 9th, and special thanks to our keynote speaker, Professor Lucy Allais, for her talk on “A Kantian Account of Freedom of the Will,” to Rima Hussein and Fearghus Horan from Johns Hopkins’s chapter of Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) for their workshop on applying to graduate school in philosophy, and to all of our undergraduate presenters for providing excellent presentations (whose names and talks will be listed below).

Sabah Rainey (Centre College), “New Streets and Signs: Street Art as a Response to Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance”

Jintao Zhu (University of Cambridge), “The Semi-liberal View: A Useful Account of the Meaning of Life”

Gillan Chalono (Amherst College), “The Personal is Political: Property as a Distributive Interface”

Codey Carr (Occidental College), “de Tocqueville on Materialism in Modern Democracy”

Long Nguyen (Hillsdale College), “Language and Common Sense in Berkeley’s Philosophy”

Tobias Rivas (Grinnell College), “Reasoning Together”

Mia Reiland (Swarthmore College), “Duties to the Environment as Seen Through Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”

Weiming Sheng (Vassar College), “Plato’s Tripartite Classification of Normative Reasons” – Winner of the Best Essay Award

Pictures were taken by Prometheus board members. Please contact [email protected] if your name is missing or if you have any questions.

Prometheus is an international undergraduate philosophy journal published by students at Johns Hopkins University. The purpose of the journal is to promote the philosophical discourse of the highest standard by offering students an opportunity to engage in open discussion, to participate in an academic conference and in the production and publication of an academic journal, and to establish a community of aspiring philosophers.

Prometheus will be accepting submissions for its 2022 issue through December 31st, 2021, 11:59 PM Eastern Time, with decisions to be expected by mid-March and publication occurring the following summer. You may find our past issues on our website: https://prometheus.students.jh.edu. Each spring, Prometheus also hosts the Mid-Atlantic Undergraduate Philosophy Conference for undergraduates from around the world to share their research. This year’s conference will be held on Saturday, April 9th, 2022. We plan to hold the conference in person. All submissions will be automatically considered for acceptance to the conference as well as to the journal. 

We are looking for papers exhibiting clarity, accessibility, soundness, and novelty of argument, which may draw from any philosophical tradition or methodology. To submit, please fill out this google form: https://forms.gle/qeipPvZAvTNSMymC9 and make sure to follow all the directions. If the Google Form does not work for you, please fill out the email submission form (link to download below) and send the filled out form along with your paper to [email protected]. For the subject of your email, please use Email Submission_Last Name_Paper Title.

We strongly encourage submissions from members of historically underrepresented groups in philosophy. For any other inquiries about submission or the publication status of your essay, please email us at [email protected]. Thank you, and we look forward to reading your papers. 

Sincerely,

The Prometheus Editorial Board

The long-awaited Prometheus Undergraduate Philosophy Journal is finally here! This year, we have six excellent papers from students attending universities from the US and Australia. We would like to thank the authors for their excellent papers, the Prometheus Editors for reviewing the submissions, and our advisor Simon who guided us through the publication process. In addition, this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the philosophy departments who shared the call for papers. Thank you all for those who helped create Prometheus, and we hope you enjoy the journal! 

Process of Reviewing:
The papers were blind-reviewed, meaning that authors were asked to eliminate all identificatory information and the reviewers did not have any information about the author when reading the papers. When reviewing a paper submitted by the member of the editorial board, we ensured that that particular paper was reviewed by other members of the editorial board.

Without further ado, here is the journal:

Prometheus is a national undergraduate philosophy journal published by students at Johns Hopkins University. The purpose of the journal is to promote the philosophical discourse of the highest standard by offering students an opportunity to engage in open discussion, to participate in an academic conference and in the production and publication of an academic journal, and to establish a community of aspiring philosophers.

This year, Prometheus will be accepting submissions for its online journal through January 29th, 2021 11:59 PM Eastern Time, with decisions to be expected by early March, and publication occurring the following fall. Individuals may submit multiple pieces to Prometheus. 

Each spring, Prometheus also hosts a conference at Johns Hopkins University for undergraduates from around the world to share their research. This year’s conference will be held on Saturday, April 10th, 2021. We are currently monitoring the status of the pandemic and will decide whether to host the conference online or on-campus in Baltimore, MD by mid-to-late February. We have decided to hold the conference online.

All submissions will be automatically considered for acceptance to the conference as well as to the journal. We are looking for papers exhibiting clarity, accessibility, soundness, and novelty of argument, which may draw from any philosophical tradition or methodology. We strongly encourage submissions from women and the members of underrepresented groups. 

Please make sure to follow all of the directions stated below if you are interested in submitting one of your philosophy papers to Prometheus.

Essay Submission

Deadline: Friday, January 29th, 2021 11:59 PM Eastern Time

Prometheus accepts undergraduate papers on all philosophical topics. Essays written for classes, honors theses, and independent work are welcome. Multiple submissions are allowed. The submission should be authored by a single person and not by multiple people.

Please make sure to read and follow all the submission requirements. We cannot guarantee your paper will be read if you fail to follow all the requirements:

1. You must be an undergraduate or a graduating senior.

2. Submissions should be written in English, 12-point font, should be double-spaced, and should not exceed 6,000 words. The word limit does not include the footnote or the reference. Submissions must have proper citations in MLA format. Essays must be the original work of the author.

3. Submit an electronic copy of your essay to [email protected] in either .doc or .docx format. If your paper relies on figures, images, or any similar media, please send all such files as their own attachments, not simply embedded in the document.

4. Please include a short (100-200 words) abstract at the beginning of your paper.

5. To enable blind review, the author’s name and other identifying information should not be included in the paper.

6. In a separate document, please include a cover page with the following information:

a. Name

b. Name of the institution you are attending

c. Major or degree

d. Year of expected graduation

e. Email address

f. Phone number

For any other inquiries about submission or the publication status of your essay, please email us at [email protected]. Thank you and we look forward to reading your papers.https://prometheus.students.jh.edu

Prometheus is holding an online conference for the presenters whose papers were accepted last semester to present for Prometheus on October 3rd, 2020 10AM – 4:30PM EST. The authors of 6 papers published online will be giving talks about their paper and accepting questions from the audience. It will be a fun philosophical time, so we hope we can see you there!

The details of the event can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/608230023385749/

The long-awaited Prometheus Undergrad Philosophy Journal is finally here! We have six excellent papers from students attending universities from the US and the UK. We are excited to publish the 2020 issue of Prometheus.

The Table of Contents:

The Undemandingness of Progressive Consequentialism, Joseph Philip Flanagan.
The University of Bristol. pp. 1 – 11.

Painting and Relation, in Their Existential Significance, Alicia Badea.
Johns Hopkins University. pp. 12 – 20.

Three Visions of an Ideal World: Kant Against Rival Idealisms, Joe Brownsberger
Yale University. pp. 21 – 27.

The Phainomena in Aristotle’s De Anima, Ammar Plumber.
University of Pennsylvania. pp. 28 – 39.

Derrida and Habermas on Modernity and the Production of Meaning, Maximilian Paul Jonathan Forster.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. pp. 40 – 48.

Heidegger’s Neglect of and Dependence on the Body in Being and Time, Jacob Joram.
Johns Hopkins University. pp. 49 – 57.

Reviewers:
Adam Katwan
Jacob Joram
Alicia Badea
Phillip Yoon
Christopher Slama
Alanna Du
Lawrence Cao
Smitha Mahesh
Jenny Jiang
Colten Fisher
Devin Harsch
Shanice Guthrie
Shannon Cho
Rowan Houlihan

Graduate Advisor:
Austin Heath

Compilers:
Christopher Slama
Lawrence Cao

Communication/Management:
Adam Katwan
Alicia Badea
Phillip Yoon

Website Development:
Phillip Yoon

Process of Reviewing:
The papers were blind-reviewed, meaning that authors were asked to eliminate all identificatory information and the reviewers did not have any information about the author when reading the papers. When reviewing a paper submitted by the member of the editorial board, we ensured that that particular paper was reviewed by other members of the editorial board.

Finally, we would like to thank the authors for their excellent papers, the Prometheus reviewers for reviewing the submissions, and Austin who guided us through the publication process. In addition, this wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the philosophy departments who shared the call for papers for Prometheus. Thank you all for those who helped Prometheus, and we hope you enjoy the journal!

Without further ado, here are the files:
(We’ve uploaded both the compiled journal and the separate papers.)

BOARD MEMBERS (AY 2019-2020)

President: Adam Katwan

Board Members:
Jake Joram
Alicia Badea
Phillip Yoon
Lawrence Cao
Joi Haskins
Devin Harsch
Smitha Mahesh
Christopher Slama

2020 Prometheus Undergraduate Conference was delayed due to the university closure caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. It will most likely be held in Spring 2021 semester, concurrently with 2021 Prometheus Conference. More information regarding 2020 & 2021 Conference will come sometime next academic year.

Thank you for the submissions and we hope you are safe during these challenging times.