Nastojanje da se dokuci ono sto je vazno o coveku uopste, kroz razmatranje prividno lokalnih tema, ideal je kojem je prema samorazumevanju neprekidno tezio srpski filozof, eticar i drustveni teoreticar, dr Svetozar Stojanovic. Ideje koje je izneo u decenijama svoga stvaralastva izrazavale su jedno vreme sada sve vise iza nas. Uprkos tome, njegove ideje su ostale jedan moguci kljuc za razumevanje nase sadasnjosti. Sta vise, njihovo ponovno otkrivanje ima potencijal da pokrene na dalekosezno razmisljanje o principima preobrazaja identiteta, kako drustvenog (...) i politickog, tako i individualnog i opsteljudskog. (shrink)

Introduction: Dead gods, divine kings, and deadly politicians -- The emergence of the lotus-self: personhood and identity -- Dead gods and people's revolts: political theory in religious acts -- The divine king and his five bodies: living history and the logic of interreligious dialogue -- Governance and deadly politicians: history as cultural criticism -- History without force: finding present space and place of time -- Constructing Nigeria's greatness: neglected paths of community, narratives, and care of the soul -- Mythos, virtues, (...) and national transformation: the search for a standard of citizenship moral behavior -- African traditional religion and critical theory: a framework for social ethics. (shrink)

IntroductionIn May 2006, the small group of doctoral students working on ecophilosophy at the Higher Institute of Philosophy at K.U.Leuven invited the Dutch environmental philosopher Martin Drenthen to a workshop to discuss his writings on the concept of wilderness, its metaphysical and moral meaning, and the challenge social constructivism poses for ecophilosophy and environmental protection. Drenthen’s publications on these topics had already been the subject of intense discussions in the months preceding the workshop. His presentation on the workshop and (...) the three critical responses by Wim Bollen, Glenn Deliège, and Richard Kover are published here in a thoroughly revised form on the basis of further and ongoing discussions about the issues involved. Three further contributions to the discussion are added: one by Nathan Edward Kowalski, a young Canadian philosopher who studied in Leuven and wrote his as yet unpublished dissertation on “Evil in Nature,” a second one by Kingsley Goodwin who is currently writing a dissertation on deep ecology at University College in Dublin and, finally, my own unsystematic thoughts inspired by Martin Drenthen’s provocative and stimulating hermeneutics of our postmodern understanding of nature and wilderness, as well as the diverse critical responses to Drenthen’s views by the other contributors. I owe gratitude to all of them for enriching my own ecophilosophical thought and enlarging its horizon although as my fragmentary reflections show at the cost of yet greater uncertainty and more questions about the possibilities of arguing for a radical environmentalist position. Such a position would somehow connect or ground our moral obligation to preserve genuine non-human otherness, wild and free nature, in the non-human meaning of such nature and in our essential need to be in direct and concrete contact with that field of wild non-human meaning because we ourselves belong to nature, because we are not only and purely civilized but are also and most fundamentally wild and free. Three fundamental questions need to be distinguished: the question about our moral obligations regarding nature and its preservation, the metaphysical question about the nature of nature or the meaning of nature, and the question of the metaphysical grounding of our morals in general, and of our moral obligation regarding nature in particular, in the nature or meaning of nature. The complex intertwinement between these three questions is at the heart of Martin Drenthen’s reflections.The authors contributing to the present discussion approach the various issues from markedly different philosophical backgrounds and concerns: critical theory, anthropology, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deep ecology are all to some degree or other brought to bear on the question of what wilderness means for us, why we are fascinated by it and what it actually and in the first place is.Another interesting difference between the five respondents to Martin Drenthen’s wilderness-philosophy relates to the place from which they write: while the Canadians Richard Kover and Nathan Edward Kowalski have wilderness of some sort still close at hand, the Belgians Wim Bollen and Glenn Deliège write from a place which has been thoroughly domesticated, cultivated, and industrialised for a long time. Martin Drenthen himself, of course, writes from the same kind of place as these last two, which explains why he only refers to the wilderness that he has read about in novels, seen in movies, or experienced as recreated in the reserves of the Netherlands. The Irish Kingsley Goodwin writes perhaps from a third, intermediate place that is not wild anymore but still much more natural than Belgium or the Netherlands are.The differences in philosophical approach and concern combined with the difference of place generate a rich tapestry of perspectives and voices wrestling with the fundamental questions of our perceived homelessness and alienation from nature, our cultural discontent, our longing for and need for radical alterity, of immanence and transcendence, of who we are and where we belong, and more concretely of whether there is more to ground our efforts to preserve nature than enlightened self-interest and subjective preference. Martin Drenthen deserves praise for inaugurating this fruitful discussion with his intriguing and highly paradoxical effort to hybridize a postmodern deconstruction of the idea and ideal of wilderness as unspoilt and true nature on the one hand with a new metaphysics of wilderness on the other. Arne Naess, who is generally regarded as the founding father of deep ecology, pointed out the positive and stimulating role that vagueness in the expression of ideas can play in political and philosophical debate. Such general and vague but highly suggestive expressions as ‘all life is one’ are not empty at all, as is often claimed; they are rather full of possibilities of ‘precisation’ and differentiation. Drenthen’s wilderness-philosophy is certainly not vague to the degree of ‘all life is one,’ but his expositions are similarly pregnant with a wealth of further questions, precisations, distinctions, and conceptual clarifications. Good examples of different kinds are to be found in the contributions of Nathan Edward Kowalski and Richard Kover. Kowalski points out that Drenthen’s notions of culture and wilderness need to be made more precise by distinguishing them from the notions of civilization and wildness such that wild cultures become a conceptual possibility. Richard Kover takes the lead from Drenthen’s question about the reason for our postmodern fascination for wilderness to confront it with our primordial fascination in terms of the dependence in the evolution of our subjectivity and our consciousness on the focused perceptual attention on wild forms.Glenn Deliège situates Martin Drenthen’s wilderness-philosophy in its original context of the Dutch debate on the preservation of nature, in particular on the new wilderness paradigm. According to this paradigm, the nature to be preserved should be true and pure, truly natural and wild nature, that is nature outside of and free from the cultivating and domesticating influence of humans. In the Netherlands, however, such nature no longer exists; it can only be preserved after it has first been artificially recreated. Deliège gives an informative summary account of the highly charged three-cornered debate between the adepts of this wilderness-paradigm, the proponents of the more traditional form of conservation of remnants of the typical European landscapes created by pre-industrial farming practices and the modern technocratic functionalists. This debate makes obvious that there are quite different views of the nature of nature and its value. Enter social constructivism: the contested nature of nature is nothing more than a social construct, an idea in a collective mind. The contestation itself is a struggle for authority and power between different such social constructs, any claim to scientific objectivity and objective truth for one’s image of nature is an arrogation of a truth which doesn’t exist and is potentially oppressive by silencing other views. Nature then is up for the grabs of politics, political negotiation, and compromise between various interest groups who all want to get some benefit from nature, some use-value.The problem with Drenthen’s effort to articulate a normative concept of nature which cannot be deconstructed in this way is the extreme formality and emptiness of his metaphysical concept of wilderness as that which is always ‘beyond’, always ‘more’ and which can never be exhausted by any image and construction of nature. Any more concrete determination is mere appearance; the thing in itself is a border concept of that which in fact cannot be grasped conceptually. Glenn Deliège is critical of this formality and emptiness from which it will be impossible to derive any concrete guidance for our conservation practices. He then goes on to defend the Arcadian tradition of our appreciation of nature as giving us a historically well-grounded orientation for those practices. Of course that Arcadian tradition is obviously a cultural construction but that doesn’t make it completely arbitrary and contingent since it is itself ultimately grounded in and open to modification by our concrete sensuous experiences of nature.Deliège here raises the very important issue of the relation between our concrete perceptual and bodily experiences in and with nature and our concepts and metaphysical images of nature. Drenthen himself approaches this issue from the hermeneutical perspective of our need to make sense of our experiences and to articulate their meaning. His confrontation with social constructivism and his effort to salvage something from its relativizing acid lead him, however, into the direction of a highly abstract and empty concept of wilderness.Richard Kover shows that perception is, indeed, the key to a radical critique of social constructivism. He does this with the help of the ecological anthropology of Paul Shepard, the structuralist anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss and the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It needs to be said here that Kover takes his leave from an unpublished paper by Martin Drenthen with the title “How to appropriate wilderness appropriately?” – the paper is accessible though on Drenthen’s web-site - in which Drenthen comments and reflects upon three contemporary wilderness-tales, one of them being Werner Herzog’s much-discussed documentary on Timothy Treadwell, an American environmentalist drop-out who lived thirteen summers among wild grizzlies in the Alaskan wilderness before being killed together with his girlfriend by a grizzly bear.Kover tries to show that we are not imprisoned in the mirror-cabinet of our mind or of our human sociality. To make his case, he starts from Paul Shepard’s thoughtful observation that the evolutionary emergence of the mind did not remove us from the natural world but actually connected us deeper with it. Through our mind we evolved more fully into it because our mind is primordially in our senses and in the ability to articulate a perceptual world. The natural world in the form of the system of natural species and their relations is the primary model for perceptual discriminations, for the fundamental discovery of order with its twin-aspects of distinction and discontinuity on the one side and relations and continuity on the other side. Our cognition is essentially perceptually based, our subjectivity is primordially informed by our inherence in the sensible world. Perceptual cognition is inherently intentional and relational, it is not an autonomous mental construction, it is rather in the world and informed by that which is perceived. The other is always intertwined with the subject. We are always already hooked up with the world, with the others, before we start reflecting, thinking, and conceptualizing. This is one of the major themes in Shepard’s work: what this insight means with regard to our relations to non-human otherness, in particular to our perceptual encounter with wild animals. In our encounter with non-human otherness, we are confronted with an essentially ambiguous sense of both affinity and disjuncture. Wild animals demonstrate to us that we are not homeless or alien to this world, that we fundamentally belong to it and are part of it. Their difference, however, shows us that there are different perspectives and ways of being in the world. “Thus the encounter with non-human others inform humans that we are both of the world and simultaneously not the world and there are horizons of significance beyond our own perspective.”Nathan Edward Kowalski comes to a similar conclusion when he situates our morality in the larger moral order of wild nature. According to Kowalski it is indeed a moral order though not our own, an Other to our morality but not simply a negative one. It is, as Drenthen says, a highly paradoxical amoral morality. But what can it mean to speak of morality here? For Kowalski it means that the issue is not merely the theoretical recognition and acknowledgment of axiological transcendence, of non-human values out there, but whether we will appropriately conform to and comport ourselves towards that axiological transcendence so that we can find a human homeland in wild nature instead of turning it into a wasteland. The question then is, how to fit our own human morality into this larger order and greater reality, to subordinate it to that greater reality as a part of it and encompassed but not denied by it so that we can be moral and natural at the same time, tender carnivores hunting the sacred game. Indigenous people follow a moral protocol in their relationship with non-human others which acknowledge and respects their autonomy, their alterity, and the sacred mystery of their different ways of being. They are not befriended but some of them are hunted and eaten – as an exchange in the gift-economy of nature.The problem of the homelessness and alienation from nature is discussed by Wim Bollen from the radically different vantage point of critical theory. In Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment the human story unfolds as a tragic effort to liberate ourselves from nature and to become fully human through rational control when in the end this effort turns against ourselves and instead of liberation and human flourishing we get social domination and repression of our natural needs. The frustrations and mutilations imposed upon us by a repressive civilization give rise to the regressive desire for a return to a natural existence. Referring to the myth of Odysseus and Circe as interpreted by Adorno and Horkheimer, Wim Bollen equates such a natural existence with animal life. In the light of contemporary knowledge about primitive existence, however, this equation is highly problematic. Palaeolithic foragers were already fully human in all respects. A life without civilization need not be an animal-existence.According to Adorno/Horkheimer, our subjectivity and autonomy have to be wrested from animal-nature through an exertive struggle that cannot but proceed by a threefold strategy of domination: the domination of non-human otherness, of human others, and of our own inner nature. The siren song of nature consists in the temptation to give up that struggle for the promise of an unreflective, non-alienated natural existence without toil.When Odysseus’ men give in to Circe’s seduction they are, however, not transformed into wild animals but into swine. According to Bollen this signifies that we cannot re-wild ourselves, that we remain imprisoned in civilization, either as master-subjects or as domesticated animals. Bollen, by the way, like Drenthen, does not distinguish conceptually between civilization and culture. Since re-wilding for Bollen means the impossibility of returning to animal-existence, which is actually the impossibility of becoming another species since biologically we are animals already, to be imprisoned in civilisation means nothing else than to be imprisoned in our humanity. The fact that we cannot become wild animals again – according to Paul Shepard, however, we are still wild animals – is indeed, as Bollen stresses, a trivial form of alienation. A more meaningful concept of alienation which can be put to critical use must refer to a culturally and historically determined frustration and deficit inside the cultural order that is to be overcome not by an impossible regression but by progressive politics leading beyond the three intertwined forms of domination. Not back to nature but forward towards a reconciliation of culture with nature! Such a reconciliation would neither collapse culture into the immanence of nature nor submerge nature into the transcendence of culture. According with the three forms of domination it would be a three-dimensional form of reconciliation.Odysseus’ men did not got what they thought were promised them: the complete liberation from the burden of being autonomous subjects, of being civilized, but they got something worthwhile, namely a certain from of pleasure, a limited and provisional relief and escape. Bollen sees a critical potential in these piggish pleasures after all and consequently even in the siren song of nature since these pleasures were only experienced because Odysseus’ men gave in to it. But one has to give in to this siren song critically if it is to unfold its liberating potential. The problem with pleasure though in bourgeois society is that it is necessarily betrayed, instrumentalized and sold.Kingsley Goodwin’s paper starts by defending deep ecology against the charge of asserting a naïve and dogmatic metaphysics of nature. For convenience sake, but not quite unproblematically, he identifies deep ecology with the environmental thought of Arne Naess. A metaphysics of nature for Naess is always part of a personal worldview. Worldviews which are partly inspired by ecology Naess calls ecosophies. Naess always stresses the personal character of such a worldview and the irreducible plurality of them. It used to be a common misunderstanding of the platform of deep ecology which Naess conceived together with George Sessions that it expressed in a condensed form the metaphysical beliefs of deep ecology. Naess’ intention, however, was to try to articulate in a general fashion the basic viewpoints on which the supporters of the deep ecology movement agreed. It would be possible then to derive these viewpoints from quite different worldviews. In light of this, I think, that Goodwin’s characterisation of the platform as “pragmatic and activist” is not quite appropriate.Goodwin goes on to compare Drenthen’s conception of wilderness and wildness with the similar position developed by Neil Evernden in his book The Social Creation of Nature. He like Naess in his personal ecosophy stresses the crucial role of perceptual experience of wild otherness to find an antidote to the relativity and contingency of our interpretations of nature. Evernden refers to studies on child development to argue for a non-dualistic and relational conception of the self, similar to Naess’ relational ontology. According to Goodwin, Drenthen, in spite of his hermeneutical approach remains too much indebted to the Western subject/object-dualism. The object, in this case wild nature, is pure otherness.With regard to a compost heap, Goodwin shows that we are not separated from nature by an inseparable gulf, that nature is close at hand, and that we can experience and explore it, appreciate the complex play of identity and difference it consists of, the exchanges and transformations and that we can identify with the organisms involved in these exchanges.*The proceeding remarks only highlight some of the prominent themes and considerations in the various contributions to this topical issue of Ethical Perspectives. Hopefully the reader will feel invited and enticed to read the articles themselves, starting, preferably of course, with the essay by Martin Drenthen, who sparked off this lively discussion on the moral meaning of wild nature. I am honoured and pleased to be able to introduce these rich explorations by such talented young environmental philosophers who are eager to develop environmental philosophy further and lead it into new directions. They all have to wrestle with and find answers to the challenge postmodern deconstruction and social constructivism pose for environmental philosophy. In the face of that challenge, it is even more difficult than it already was to provide solid and convincing arguments for the defence of wild and free nature beyond merely pragmatic arguments in terms of its utilitarian value for us. The reason for that defence is not clear-cut and proves to be just as evasive as the moral meaning of nature itself. But neither that reason nor that meaning are mere phantoms and mirages that vanish when we approach them and try to grasp them. They are more substantial, even if they will never have the solidity of a mathematical proof or a scientific measurement. Their locale is the lifeworld which from the point of view of scientific and logical precision and clarity is a messy place where subject and object, reason and heart, fact and value, experience and thought and, yes, nature and culture cannot be clearly separated. This has important consequences for environmental philosophy and its methodology. Conceptual analysis and logical argumentation have to become sensitive to the richness of experience in the lifeworld and to the diverse efforts of its articulation: i.e., they have to open themselves up and maybe even to subordinate themselves to phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches. For me personally this is one of the most important conclusions I draw from the discussion presented here. (shrink)

Generally speaking, the existence of experience is accepted, but more challenging has been to say what experience is and how it occurs. Moreover, philosophers and scholars have been talking about mind and mental activity in connection with experience as opposed to physical processes. Yet, the fact is that quantum physics has replaced classical Newtonian physics in natural sciences, but the scholars in humanities and social sciences still operate under the obsolete Newtonian model. There is already a little research in (...) which mind and conscious experience are explained in terms of quantum theory. This article argues that experience is impossible to be both a physical and non-physical phenomenon. When discussing causality and identity as transcendental, quantum theory may imply the quantum physical nature of conscious experience, where a person associates causality to conscious experience, and, thus, the result is that the double-aspect theory and the mind/brain identity theory would be refuted. (shrink)

When researching with or about families in home-based research, there are numerous unexpected ethical issues that can emerge, particularly in qualitative research. This paper is based on reflective accounts of four homed-based research projects, two in the UK and two Australia, which examined ethical dilemmas identified when engaged in home-based research with young children. Using a synergy of ecocultural theory and Foucauldian ideas of Heterotopia as theoretical conceptualisations, the authors employed reflective lenses to guide their approach, and examine dilemmas and (...) complexities when conducting research in the home. We argue that, to address ethical dilemmas, researchers need to problematise and reflect upon the nature of respectful approaches and the ethical implications of their behaviours. We conclude that, although ethical codes are valuable when researching families at home, researchers should plan for and forefront their methodological approaches in ways that are family-centred, whilst also framed by practices that are ethical, respectful and reflective to the situated contexts of family’s ecologies and heterotopias. (shrink)

Environmentalists do not appear to walk their walk as consistently as animal liberationists and anti-abortionists. Are we therefore more hypocritical? Maybe; but there's another explanation. Unlike concern for individual animals or individual fetuses, environmental concerns are holistic —air and waterpollution, species extinction, diminished ecological health and integrity. One pro-life pregnant woman may preserve the life of one unborn baby, the one in her uterus; and one animal liberationist can save the life of one animal, the one he didn't eat. But (...) one environmentalist who refuses to own and operate an automobile has no measurable effect on air pollution. Only collective, social change—universal banning of automobiles, mandatory recycling, etc.—will effectively redress environmental insults. Thus, the best way to put environmental ethics into practice is not to try to do one's bit—retire one's own car, recycle one's own waste—and leave it to every other person to do his or her bit and hope that all such individual environmental ethical acts will aggregate into significance. The best way to put environmental ethics into practice is to work to instill environmental values in society as the foundation for coercive environmental policies, regulations, and laws. The mechanistic-materialistic worldview and its associated consumerist value system trickled down into the collective consciousness via its technological manifestation in a plethora of machines. The systemic worldview in which environmental values are embedded may be communicated to the general public less by means of discursive discourse than by a new generation of systemic-electronic technologies. (shrink)

The need to fill three gaps in ethics research in a business context sparked the current study. First, the distinction between the concepts of “ethical” and “legal” needs to be incorporated into theory building and empiricism. Second, a unifying theory is needed that can explain the variables that influence managers to emphasize ethics and legality in their judgments. Third, empirical evidence is needed to confirm the predictive power of the unifying theory, the discernable influence of personal and organizational variables, and (...) the importance of the issue to the managers in determining their emphasis on the ethical and legal values of their judgments. Focused on these needs, the current research combines social identity theory with empirical findings from business ethics research. This theory building initiative framed hypothesis-driven research to investigate the influences on managers’ emphasis on ethical and legal values in making business judgments. An empirical research study was conducted involving 252 practicing managers who judged 12 newsworthy business events. Data was collected on the managers’ individual factors, on the groups that influence their judgments, and on the importance that the managers place on ethics and legality in judging the 12 scenarios. The research findings contribute to theory development (1) By successfully utilizing a blended extension of social identity and issue-contingent theories to understand managers’ judgments, and (2) By providing evidence on the relationships between the perceived importance of an issue and the emphases managers place on ethical and legal values in their judgments. The analysis of the data was extended to provide insights on the needs of employers to tailor management training on legal and ethical decision-making. The participating managers were clustered according to their emphases on Ethical Importance and Legal Importance in judging business situations. Analysis of Variance was then combined with Scheffé Multiple Comparison Tests to assess whether the factors derived from a blended extension of social identity and issue-contingent theories were significantly different across the clusters. The product of this analysis is unique sets of attributes that describe each cluster of managers, and provide an empirical basis for determining training priorities. Finally, the carefully constructed and thoroughly tested 12 research scenarios that form the core of the survey instrument enable their redeployment in subsequent research and their use by practicing executives who wish to compare data provided by their managers to results from the study participants. (shrink)

This special section on the later work of Paul Ricoeur is an attempt to examine the fruitfulness of that work for the social sciences. Of particular interest are his theorization and application of the notions of memory, identity, justice, and the relation to the other to political and ethical problems in the present. For example, his discourse links up the question of memory with that of justice and the problem of constructing new polities which can be considered just. To (...) do this, he introduces the concepts of ‘translation ethos’, the ‘exchange of memories’ and ‘non-forgetful forgiveness’ in order to examine the problem of the conditions for the imaginary construction of political entities in which dialogue can take place between interlocutors with different, maybe conflicting, interests and historical locations, and thus with different senses of belonging and identities. His philosophical apparatus is shown to have particular salience for the analysis of contemporary society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology ed. by John HartDannis M. MattesonThe Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology Edited by John Hart OXFORD: JOHN WILEY & SONS LTD, 2017. 560 pp. $195.00If ecology is the study of "relationships in a place," as John Hart reminds readers in the preface of the Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology, it is fitting (...) that this volume centers its thrust relationally (xxiv). Throughout its pages, a diverse community of authors explores the relationships among religious and spiritual traditions, human life, and care for the Earth. Defining religion as a language with which to grapple with meanings assigned to cultural values (xxi), this volume turns to the meanings that humans have historically placed on their relationship to the Earth within spiritual and religious frameworks. It further ponders how our religions and spiritual traditions reflect a relationship to the Earth that is conscious of the status of our planet's health today. Offering insights from Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Eastern and Western Christianity, and indigenous perspectives, the authors reflect on new and old insights from within their tradition that speak to specific ecological issues. The volume is split into four parts, flowing thematically from conceptual and descriptive, to concrete visions for practical steps toward healing the Earth. [End Page 199]Part 1 describes the various ways religious and spiritual traditions enhance ecological consciousness. Seyyed Hossein Nasr shows how the Qur'an depicts the created order as a reflection of God's face, suggesting that we are literally defacing the face of God in our industrial recklessness. David Mevorach Seidenberg presents a Jewish eco-theology, which decenters the human as the pinnacle of creation. In part 2, the authors further draw out the socioecological implications of religious teachings. Melanie Harris argues that religious communities must open their eyes to the link between structural violence against black women to structural violence against the Earth. She maintains that this analysis is key to finding solutions for ecological reparations. When Harris argues that social justice is Earth justice, she is claiming that the dismantling of both white supremacy and colonial ecology go hand in hand.Part 3, titled "Ecological Commitment," highlights the specific contexts in which the relationship between religion and ecology are embedded. Myrna Perez Sheldon and Naomi Oreskes trace the entanglement of evangelical identity with the politics of scientific doubt. In response, they suggest a new framework for evangelical participation in environmental restoration that moves beyond a political identity that is chained to right-wing doubt about climate change. In asking how "Korean Christianity can become more Nature-conscious, Nature-related, and Nature-integrated," Yong Bum Park points to Chondogyo, a Korean indigenous religion (333). This tradition is shown to take seriously the ecological crisis as a "crisis of consciousness and conduct," encouraging religious people to foster a socioecological vision of restoration (333).Part 4, which provides examples of concrete visions and projects on the ground, ends with John Hart's reimagining of the Earth as a "common commons." The notion that the Earth is a sacred "common commons" of "interdependent, integral, evolving relational community" requires conversion in light of how religious people relate to the Earth today (437). According to this commons ethic, land should be "commonized and communalized" rather than rendered private property (476).I highly recommend this volume for teaching undergraduate and graduate courses that are exploring the intersection of religion and ecology, especially courses focusing on religious ethics. Though the breadth of this work might strike the reader as boundless, herein lies its strength, especially for teachers of Christian ethics. This resource broadens the conversation recently highlighted by Pope Francis in Laudato Si' beyond the Christian perspective on ecology. The Companion models interreligious dialogue, opening to the diverse ways many different religious and spiritual traditions demand action for environmental restoration. [End Page 200]Dannis M. MattesonLoyola University ChicagoCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

‘Soul’, ‘self’, ‘substance’ and ‘person’ are just four of the terms often used to refer to the human individual. Cutting across metaphysics, ethics, and religion the nature of personal identity is a fundamental and long-standing puzzle in philosophy. Personal Identity and Applied Ethics introduces and examines different conceptions of the self, our nature, and personal identity and considers the implications of these for applied ethics. A key feature of the book is that it considers a range of different approaches to (...) personal identity; philosophical, religious, and cross-cultural, including perspectives from non-Western traditions. Within this comparative framework, Andrea Sauchelli examines the following topics: -Early views of the soul in Plato, Christianity, and Descartes -The Buddhist ‘no-self’ views and the self as a fiction -Confucian ideas of our nature and the importance of self-cultivation as constitutive of the self -Locke’s theory of personal identity as continuity of consciousness and memory and objections to Locke’s argument by Butler and Reid as well as contemporary critics -The theory of ‘animalism’ and arguments concerning embodied concepts of personal identity -Practical and narrative theories of personal identity and moral agency -Personal identity and issues in applied ethics, including abortion, organ transplantation, and the idea of life after death -Implications of life-extending technologies for personal identity. Throughout the book Sauchelli also considers the views of important recent philosophers of personal identity such as Sydney Shoemaker, Bernard Williams, Derek Parfit, Marya Schechtman, and Christine Korsgaard, placing these in helpful historical context. Chapter summaries, a glossary of key terms, and suggestions for further reading make this a refreshing, approachable introduction to personal identity and applied ethics. It is an ideal text for courses on personal identity that consider both Western and non-Western approaches and that apply theories of personal identity to ethical problems. It will also be of interest to those in related subjects such as religious studies and history of ideas. (shrink)

Work is fundamental to human society and modern organizations, and consequently has been central to the thinking of major social theorists and social science disciplines. This book offers a 'one-stop-shop' guide to classical and contemporary perspectvies of work written by leading international experts. Schools covered include: Weberian, Marxian, Durkheimian, feminist, neo-classical economics, institutional economics, ethics, Foucauldian, postmodernist, organizational sociology and economic sociology. Each chapter traces the origins of the theoretical school, reviews seminal contributions,and considers major criticisms of the (...) approach. In addition, the book features a section on key aspects of work - professions, technology, identity and globalisation - to which these theories have been applied. The book makes a major contribution in a number of ways: · Provides systematic coverage of major social and economic theories and the way they aid our understanding of work;· Includes a section of chapters that consider, in an applied way, how social theories have helped the analysis of key substantive areas of work;· Includes contributions from leading academics from both Europe and the USA; · Each chapter can be read as free-standing summary of a particular school of theoretical approach;· In addition, the introductory and concluding chapters examine themes cross-cutting the other chapters in the book.It is an essential text for academics and advanced students concerned with the sociology of work, management, and organization studies. (shrink)

How can businesses and business leaders contribute to solutions of the big ethical, social, and ecological challenges of today? Within this context this book offers theoretical and practical approaches to making the world a better place for existing and future generations. It uses diverse, often multidimensional frames of reference and illustrates them with real-life cases to show positive solutions. The author's broad professional background and humanistic worldview are reflected in his application of psychological and virtue-oriented theories as well as (...) philosophical approaches. Some of the articles have an essay format, others share his experiences and experiments in his ethics classes using roleplays to cultivate empathic and prudent ethical behaviour. A primary motivation of the book is to inspire leaders as well as teachers and students of leadership and business by enriching their worldviews to see ethics as a fundamental aspect at all levels of economic activity. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, instead of standing as an exemplar of contemporary environmentalism, North American Indian voices on the environment offer insights concerning ecological relationships that can be brought to bear on theories of environmental value and the politics of environmentalism. I argue that environmentally orthodox representations of Native views are further complicated by the metaphysics of local ecological knowledge. I then argue that moral ecologism, a normative view focused on inter­dependence throughout the living world and evidenced by (...) contemporary American Indian voices, can help align traditional environmentalism with the contemporary scientific understanding of ecological relationships. (shrink)

Many philosophers have thought that the problem of personal identity over time is not metaphysically deep. Perhaps the debate between the rival theories is somehow empty or is a ‘merely verbal dispute’. Perhaps questions about personal identity are ‘nonsubstantive’ and fit more for conceptual analysis and close attention to usage than for theorizing in the style of serious metaphysics, theorizing guided by considerations of systematicity, parsimony, explanatory power, and aiming for knowledge about the objective structure of the world. I discuss (...) a thesis about consciousness according to which there are perfectly natural phenomenal properties. Although I do not argue for this thesis, I believe that it is plausible, whether or not physicalism is true. Given the thesis, there are deep, substantive questions about which individuals or pluralities instantiate the relevant phenomenal properties. Equally substantive questions can then be asked about the duration and other spatiotemporal characteristics of those individuals or pluralities, both in actual cases and in hypothetical puzzle cases adapted from the personal identity literature. I suggest that, at least prima facie, these questions interact with our future-directed egoistic concern in much the same way that the personal identity question is often thought to. As a slogan: “you give me substantive, determinate facts about consciousness; I give you substantive, determinate facts about personal identity”. (shrink)

As we can see, the side effects caused by the continuous development of science and economy have gradually brought human society into a risk society. While currently, the power of globalization is unceasingly forming a world risk society. German renowned philosopher and sociologist Ulrich Beck has opened a unique and novel researching angle to review science difficulty and abuse of modern world risk society, and has made comprehensive and profound analysis. World risk society has three main characters: First, the emergence (...) of the world risk society is linked to the two fundamental changes still influencing our lives, which is the so-called “end of nature” and “end of tradition”. Second, in world risk society, mankind lose their dependence on “expert system”. The religion is replaced by the concept uncertainty and uncontrollable. In addition, there are other series of problems and abuses between world risk society and traditional society. The prime mover of social changes in world risk society exists in the side effects instead of the instrumental ration in traditional times, etc. The problem in world risk society’s science ethics are as follows: First, expansion of ration. It is mankind’s extreme confidence in ration that causing unlimited development of technology and exploitation of resources. Thus almost everywhere in nature becomes man‐made nature. Second, rupture of knowledge. From “knowledge is virtue and virtue isknowledge” (Socrates) to “knowledge is power” (Bacon), now “knowledge is money” (Bacon). Third, displacement of science value. In traditional society, science research is scientists’ personal interests. Now science research turns its target to meeting social needs, and scientists gain more profits from the technologicalproducts directly. Beck has raised the theory of risk society, and attempted to use “reflexive modernity” as the strategic plan to respond the global consequence of modern science crisis, and expressed revelatory viewpoint on diagnosis of the essential of “reflexive modernity”. Similarly, Lash emphasizes risk culture toremind human to pay attention to the ecological threat and risk. In addition, Bauman and Habermas also have some statements, etc. So my conclusion is, we should consider the autonomy of science development and its inherent relationship with economic interests. In addition, what we concern is the science dual identity of both defendant and expert. Also, the public’s understanding of the uncertainty provides a space for democratization. (shrink)

In the digital age, the concept of identity has evolved in ways that challenge long-held philosophical assumptions about the self. No longer has fixed or continuous, identity become fragmented, shaped by multiple digital personas that people craft in response to the ever-expanding digital universe. Now, there is no sense of a fixed self that remains constant throughout space and time. Self and identity can be seen as a Heraclitean flux always in a state of becoming and never for a moment (...) being in a state of being. The boundaries between the real and the virtual have blurred, and hyperreal experiences now often seem more significant than actual events. This review delves into the complex relationship between selfhood and digital representation, exploring how traditional theories like Baudrillard’s hyperreality and Buddhist notions of impermanence help explain this transformation. It examines the implications of digital simulations, especially in the context of digital immortality, which raises profound questions about consciousness, existence, and the essence of being. In a world where avatars, social media profiles, and virtual realities dominate, self navigates an uncertain terrain between reality and simulation. This study is an exploration of the evolving nature of identity, consciousness, and human experience in the age of digital fragmentation, with a focus on the philosophical and psychological dimensions of selfhood in the modern, digitized world. (shrink)

This book is a major new introduction to the field of ecological ethics. Taking issue with the common assumption that existing human ethics can be 'extended' to meet the demands of the ongoing ecological crisis, Patrick Curry shows that a new and truly ecological ethic is both possible and urgently needed. With this distinctive proposition in mind, Curry introduces and discusses all the major concepts needed to understand the full range of ecological ethics. Focussing first on the major concepts of (...) ethics - religious and secular - and value, Curry then examines the gradations of ecological ethics. He discusses light green, shallow or anthropomorphic ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; mid-green or intermediate ethics represented by animal liberation/rights and biocentrism; and dark green, deep, or ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the various kinds of ecocentric ethics, such as the Land Ethic, The Gaia Hypothesis, and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered in this context. The concluding chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject. It will be of great interest to students, activists, and to a wider public concerned with the ecocrisis, its main theories, debates, and possible solutions. (shrink)

This study examines philosophically the idea of relationality as a feature of moral agency and analyses the implications of adopting such an idea in ethical theories as frameworks for environmental ethics. The purpose is to fill the gap in academic philosophical discussion concerning the relationality of the operations of moral agency. In environmental philosophy, relationality is a quite widely defended idea with regard to the concepts of nature and human nature. However, as far as I know, relationality as constitutive for (...) moral operations has not been previously scrutinised to any large extent. The main task consists of two parts. The first is to construct the idea of moral agency as ecologically relational on the basis of the parallel with the lines of thought taken in two critical stances in environmental ethics towards the mainstream modern conception of moral agency, namely evolutionary naturalism and ecofeminist constructivism. The second is to analyse the philosophical implications of this relational shift in moral naturalism and moral constructivism. Together they clarify the implications of relational moral agency for environmental ethics. The study starts by analysing the concepts of moral agency in the three distinguished strategies of environmental ethics: the modernist one, which is used as the reference line, evolutionary naturalism and ecofeminist constructivism. Both of the latter take a critical stance towards the first, but from philosophically opposing directions. This study shows that these two criticisms parallel each other and are directed towards a converging idea of ecologically relational agency. The concept of relational agency is sketched through interdisciplinary support from the natural sciences, psychological and philosophical anthropology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind and action. It is argued that a currently plausible notion of moral agency challenges the view widely presupposed by modern moral philosophy. According to the analysed sources, human mental processes, knowledge and value formation included, are extended to their environments, relationships providing knowledge, experience or even intention are mutually interactive, and even intentional activity can be a non-individual issue. Research on these features refer to environmental relationality of mental operations. Relational agency fulfils the environmentalist’s quest for a plausible notion of agency. However, to consider moral identity, as well as knowing, reasoning and acting as ecologically relational challenges common conceptions of moral autonomy and rationality. Question is raised whether this compromises the autonomy and authority of ethics. The philosophical implications of ecologically relational notion of agency are analysed in contexts of Humean naturalism, neo-Aristotelian naturalism (especially Martha Nussbaum) and neo-Kantian constructivism (especially Christine Korsgaard). Korsgaard’s theory is proposed to offer a mediating tool to reconcile relational explanation with normative authority. It is argued that the relational approach to ethics can survive the quests for moral realism, although it challenges the usual restrictions of metaethical categories and points towards a modest, relationally realist ethics. (shrink)

In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the highly successful _Ecological Ethics_, Patrick Curry shows that a new and truly ecological ethic is both possible and urgently needed. With this distinctive proposition in mind, Curry introduces and discusses all the major concepts needed to understand the full range of ecological ethics. He discusses light green or anthropocentric ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; the mid-green or intermediate ethics of animal liberation/rights; and (...) dark or deep green ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the Land Ethic, the Gaia Hypothesis and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered and attention is paid to the close relationship between ecocentrism and virtue ethics. Other chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. In this new edition, all these have been updated and joined by discussions of climate change, sustainable economies, education, and food from an ecocentric perspective. This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject which puts ecocentrism and the critique of anthropocentrism back at the top of the ethical, intellectual and political agenda. It will be of great interest to students and activists, and to a wider public. (shrink)

This paper contributes to biodiversity and species extinction literature by examining the relationship between corporate accountability in terms of species protection and factors affecting such accountability from forward-thinking companies. We use triangulation of theories, namely deep ecology, legitimacy, and we introduce a new perspective to the stakeholder theory that considers species as a ‘stakeholder’. Using Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood regression, we examine a sample of 200 Fortune Global companies over 3 years. Our results indicate significant positive relations between ecologically conscious (...) companies that are accountable for the protection of biodiversity and species extinction and external assurance, environmental performance, partnerships with socially responsible organizations and awards for sustainable activities. Our empirical results appear to be robust in controlling for possible endogeneities. Our findings contribute to the discussion on the concern of species loss and habitat destruction in the context of corporate accountability, especially in responding to the sixth mass extinction event and COVID-19 crisis. Our results can also guide the policymakers and stakeholders of the financial market in better decision making. (shrink)

In this article, we propose an adaption to stakeholder theory whereby stakeholders are conceptualized on the basis of their social identity. We begin by offering a critical review of both traditional and more recent developments in stakeholder theory, focusing in particular on the way in which stakeholder categories are identified. By identifying critical weaknesses in the existing approach, as well as important points of strength, we outline an alternative approach that refines our understanding of stakeholders in important ways. To (...) do so, we draw on notions of social identity as the fundamental basis for group cohesion, mobilization, and action. A new form of cross-mapping as a basis for stakeholder identification is advanced and key research questions are set out. (shrink)

This article analyses and interprets the works of Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000) as a source of inspiration for environmental ethics and offers an extended model of the Ecological Self based on an interpretation of his works. Hundertwasser was a prominent Jewish-Austrian artist and environmental activist, yet despite his commitment to environmental issues, he has not received the attention he deserves from the environmental ethics community. His works and writings suggest a critique and reformulation of the well-known concept of the Ecological Self. (...) This concept implies that humans are essentially embedded in the natural world – that the Self is porous and open rather than disengaged and atomistic. This article suggests an alternative, holistic and extended version of this concept. It assesses and incorporates additional layers found between humans and nature – clothing, architecture, urban environments, and social and political environments. (shrink)

The relevance of leader ethicality has moti- vated ethical leadership theory. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of moral identity for the concept of ethical leadership. We relate ethical leadership incorporating an internalized moral identity to productive deviant workplace behavior. Using qualitative empirical data we illustrate the relevance of critical situations, i.e., situations in which hypernorms and organizational norms diverge, for the distinction of ethical leaders with or without internalized moral identities. Our paper takes a multidisciplinary approach integrating insight (...) from management as well as humanities and social sciences toward a comprehensive sense of ethical leadership. (shrink)

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of cool have informed the American ethos since at least the 1970s. Whether we strive for it in politics or fashion, cool is big business for those who can sell it across a range of markets and media. Yet the concept wasn't always a popular commodity. Cool began as a potent aesthetic of post-World War II black culture, embodying a very specific, highly charged method of resistance to white supremacy and the globalized exploitation of capital. (...) _Way Too Cool_ follows the hollowing-out of "coolness" in modern American culture and its reflection of a larger evasion of race, racism, and ethics now common in neoliberal society. It revisits such watershed events as the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, second-wave feminism, the emergence of identity politics, 1980s multiculturalism, 1990s rhetorics of diversity and colorblindness, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the contemporaneous developments of rising mass incarceration and legalized same-sex marriage. It pairs the perversion of cool with the slow erasure of racial and ethical issues from our social consciousness, which effectively quashes our desire to act ethically and resist abuses of power. The cooler we become, the more indifferent we grow to the question of values, particularly inquiry that spurs protest and conflict. This book sounds an alarm for those who care about preserving our ties to an American tradition of resistance. (shrink)

Moving beyond identity politics while continuing to respect diverse entities and concerns, Whitney A. Bauman builds a planetary politics that better responds to the realities of a pluralistic world. Calling attention to the historical, political, and ecological influences shaping our understanding of nature, religion, humanity, and identity, Bauman collapses the boundaries separating male from female, biology from machine, human from more than human, and religion from science, encouraging readers to embrace hybridity and the inherent fluctuations of an open, evolving global (...) community. As he outlines his planetary ethic, Bauman concurrently develops an environmental ethic of movement that relies not on place but on the daily connections we make across the planet. He shows how both identity politics and environmental ethics fail to realize planetary politics and action, limited as they are by foundational modes of thought that create entire worlds out of their own logic. Introducing a postfoundational vision not rooted in the formal principles of "nature" or "God" and not based in the idea of human exceptionalism, Bauman draws on cutting-edge insights from queer, poststructural, and deconstructive theory and makes a major contribution to the study of religion, science, politics, and ecology. (shrink)

This book addresses the question of the communication of Christian ethics in the public forum of liberal, pluralist societies. Drawing on debates in philosophy, theology and sociological theory, it relates the problem of communication to fundamental questions about the nature of liberal societies and the identity of Christian faith and the Christian community. With particular emphasis on Kantian and neo-Kantian ethics, it explores the link between autonomy and community in liberal societies. The theology of communio, expressed in revealed Christian traditions, (...) can reconcile autonomy and community. Any Christian attempt to communicate this vision must also reflect on Christianity's own identity, especially the ways in which its own self-consciousness grows in critical interaction with secularity. In this light, Christian ethical communication is both a witness to a distinctive identity, founded in the revelation of the triune God, and a vision of universal human solidarity which can reconcile autonomy and community. (shrink)

Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elements of the psyche. Moving beyond the recourse of sublimation, post-Freudians attacked reason’s hegemony in quelling disruptive psycho-dynamics (...) and, focusing upon the social domain, they sought strategies to counter the oppressive (repressive) social restrictions and conformist impositions impeding individual freedom that result from thwarted desire. Postmodern celebration of desire at the expense of reason and sublimation leaves the Enlightenment prospects altogether and moves psychoanalysis into a new terrain, where the very notion of rationality and an autonomous ego upon which much of Freudianism rests has been deconstructed. Thus the debate that begins with Freud’s social theories reflects the deeper divisions, which arose with postmodern ethics and discarded Cartesian–Kantian notions of personal identity. Here we consider the moral framework in which Freudian social theory sits and a contrasting understanding of agency that confronts his modernist conception. In that debate, we discern the larger humanist confrontation with postmodernity. Yet, all who engaged Freud shared some version of his utopian ethos, albeit radically restructuring the theory upon which social reform might occur. (shrink)

This book examines the complexities of the hipster through the lens of art history and cultural theory, from Charles Baudelaire's flan̂eur to the contemporary 'creative' borne from creative industries policies. It claims that the recent ubiquity of hipster culture has led many artists to confront their own significance, responding to the mass artification of contemporary life by de-emphasising the formal and textual deconstructions so central to the legacies of modern and postmodern art. In the era of creative digital technologies, long (...) held characteristics of art such as individual expression, innovation, and alternative lifestyle are now features of a flooded and fast-paced global marketplace. Against the idea that artists, like hipsters, are the 'foot soldiers of capitalism', the institutionalized networks that make up the contemporary art world are working to portray a view of art that is less a discerning exercise in innovative form-making than a social platform--a forum for populist aesthetic pleasures or socio-political causes. It is in this sense that the concept of the hipster is caught up in age-old debates about the relation between ethics and aesthetics, examined here in terms of the dynamics of global contemporary art."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Finding Safe Harbor:Buddhist Sexual Ethics in AmericaStephanie KazaWhen the Buddha left home in search of spiritual understanding, he left behind his wife and presumably the pleasures of sex. After his enlightenment, he encouraged others to do the same: renounce the world of the senses to seek liberation from suffering. The monks and nuns that followed the Buddha's teachings formed a kind of sexless society, a society that did not (...) reproduce itself biologically.1 By abstaining from sexual relations, Buddhist monastics intended to reduce attachment and model an alternative to lay life. Buddhist society would continue via transmission of the teachings, a spiritual form of continuity not dependent on sex.But of course, the Buddha was teaching ordinary people with ordinary appetites for sexual contact. And these appetites could really get in the way of spiritual progress; thus we find no shortage of Buddhist commentary on sexuality and its ramifications. And despite 2,500 years of wisdom on this subject, Buddhist teachers and students are still blundering into sexual contacts that undermine their own progress and often the progress of others. Clearly this is not a human fallibility that can be corrected by setting up some simple rules. In fact, sexuality is one of the most deeply hard-wired neurological drives of the human organism, not easily uprooted even for lofty spiritual ideals.From a Buddhist perspective, working with sexuality is working with attachment. How can we understand that attachment in its biological origins? In A Natural History of Sex, Adrian Forsyth describes in vivid detail the ecology and evolution of mating behavior in the animal kingdom.2 In sixteen chapters that cover every biological strategy you can imagine—from incest to role reversal, infanticide to sex change—the author shows how costly sex can be to individual organisms. Though sex is not the only means of reproduction, it certainly involves the most complex behaviors, anatomical variations, social choices, and in a few cases, the risk of death. What can possibly merit such a great investment in momentary pleasure (if indeed it is pleasurable for some animals)? The evolutionary answer is, genetically variable offspring. Variation is the key to surviving calamity as a species. If all animals of a species were genetically identical, they would be terribly vulnerable to single events that exploited their weaknesses. But with variation, there is always a chance that some will make it [End Page 23] through and go on to survive the new conditions (post-earthquake, fire, icestorm, plague, etc.).Seen from the long view of evolution, sexuality is the key to survival of the species. So it is not surprising that sexual conditioning affects the entire human brain, a fact well known to human adolescents. To see how much conditioning must be addressed by Buddhist practice, we can look briefly at the neural map of the human brain. The part of the cortex that responds to touch is wrapped around the cerebrum, with specific areas registering touch in the different parts of the body. The area taken up by the genitals is about as large as the rest of the chest, abdomen, and back put together. It is equivalent to the area used for the hands or the lips, two parts of the body where touch is crucial for finding and managing food. Rita Carter, in Mapping the Mind, points out that "connections from the sex-sniffing, sex-seeking and sex-reactive areas of the limbic systems radiate to almost every corner of every cortical lobe, feeding the urge to our conscious minds."3 Sexual activity involves not only touch and high-level visual recognition but also emotion, thought, and, in the frontal lobes, morality—some of our most sophisticated and abstract thought processes.It is clear that sexuality presents no small challenge to religious practice. How has Buddhism attempted to work with this deep biological conditioning? The central guidelines for Buddhist ethics can be found in the five foundational precepts. Practicing the precepts is seen as a way to reduce suffering and to deepen one's capacity for achieving enlightenment. The first two precepts deal with not killing and not stealing, the third precept deals with not engaging in... (shrink)

An accessible yet rigorous introduction to the field, Environmental Ethics: Theory in Practice helps students develop the analytical skills to effectively identify and evaluate the social and ethical dimensions of environmental issues. Covering a wide variety of theories and critical perspectives, author Ronald Sandler considers their strengths and weaknesses, emphasizes their practical importance, and grounds the discussions in a multitude of both classic and contemporary cases and examples. FEATURES * Discusses a wide range of theories of environmental ethics, representing (...) their strengths and weaknesses as charitably as possible without advocating for any particular theory, thereby encouraging students to think critically about which views are well justified and which are not * Extensive use of cases and examples links theoretical and practical issues and shows how environmental issues have both social and ecological components; issues covered include climate change, species conservation, ecological economics, consumption, environmental justice, intergenerational justice, genetically modified crops, animal agriculture, population, environmental rights, and food security, among many others * Incorporates both classic and cutting-edge cases and examples; iconic cases include the spotted owl, Bhopal chemical link, and Hetch Hetchy controversies, while contemporary cases include lead contamination of Flint, Michigan's water supply and innovations is conservation genetics, including conservation cloning, deextinction, and gene drives * Covers food ethics--addressing such topics as genetic engineering, food systems, food waste, and eating animals--and technology ethics, reflecting on technological power and the role of technology in creating and responding to environmental issues * Emphasizes the social justice dimensions of environmental problems with chapters on environmental justice, food security, ecofeminism, and more * Includes text boxes that provide extended discussions of cases; thought experiments; additional coverage of theoretical issues discussed in the main text; and exercises that ask students to apply theories or reflect on how theoretical issues intersect with practical problems * Provides numerous pedagogical aids including review questions, discussion questions, key terms and additional reading lists at the end of each chapter, extensive internal cross-referencing, a glossary of key terms and concepts, and more than thirty images, illustrations, tables, and graphs. (shrink)

Recovering the Self seeks to place issues of morality and justice at the heart of social theory. Because of the breakdown of traditional forms of authority, respect for authorities can no longer be taken for granted. Increasingly people believe that respect has to be earned and people have to discover sources of authority within themselves. Victor Seidler seeks to establish a framework to rethink the relation between self and society, identities and power. Through exploring the works of Marx, Weber, (...) and Durkheim he shows the hidden complexities of a modernity too often identified with a unified vision of the rational self. Reinstating the body and emotional life into the discussion, Seidler sets new terms for respect and equality by showing ways the self is undermined in its sense of self-worth and adequacy through the working of relationships of power and subordination. (shrink)

This companion volume focuses on the application and practical ramifications of Indian ethics. Here Indian dharma ethics is moved from its preeminent religious origins and classical metaethical proclivity to, what Kant would call, practical reason–or in Aristotle’s poignant terms, ēhikos and phronēis–and in more modern parlance normative ethics. Our study examines a wide range of social and normative challenges facing people in such diverse areas as women’s rights, infant ethics, politics, law, justice, bioethics and ecology. As a contemporary (...) volume, it builds linkages between existing theories and emerging moral issues, problems and questions in today’s India in the global arena. The volume brings together contributions from some 40 philosophers and contemporary thinkers on practical ethics, exploring both the scope and boundaries or limits of ethics as applied to everyday and real-life concerns and socio-economic challenges facing India in the context of a troubled globalizing world. As such, this collection draws on multiple forms of writing and research, including narrative ethics, interviews, critical case studies and textual analyses. The book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of Indian philosophy, Indian ethics, women and infant issues, social justice, environmental ethics, bioethics, animal ethics and cross-cultural responses to dominant Western moral thought. It will also be useful to researchers working on the intersection of Gandhi, sustainability, ecology, theology, feminism, comparative philosophy and dharma studies. (shrink)

Utilizing examples from recent art, we critique Greta Gaard's argument that an inclusive ecofeminism must account for the role played by erotophobia in oppression. We suggest that while Gaard offers valuable insight into how fear of the erotic contributes to maintaining heteropatriarchal institutions, it fails to account for forms of oppression specific to lesbians. Moreover, Gaard's analysis unwittingly reinforces the conceptual, hence political, economic, and social invisibility of lesbians that, following Marilyn Frye, we argue is not merely consequent to (...) compulsory heterosexuality, but constitutive of it. Lastly, we sketch a lesbian erotic whose potential for generating conceptual dissonance within heteropatriarchal value dualism contains the seeds of a creative "sensibility" out of which a genuinely queer ecofeminism might emerge. (shrink)

The politics of the Anthropocene has been widely debated within recent sociological theory. This article seeks to argue that Marxism, critical theory and especially the work of Herbert Marcuse have a great deal to contribute to these debates. Here, I seek to link together the recent revival of interest in the idea of the commons by the alter-globalisation movement and Marxist social theory in an attempt to challenge some of the dominant assumptions in respect of the nature/culture division and (...) the neoliberal dominance of mainstream politics. The more critical politics of the commons would suggest both a radical politics fit for the twenty-first century and a way of understanding the environmental crisis located within critical understandings of the histories of capitalism and social movements. This is suggestive of a civilisation-based politics focused on questions of emancipation informed by political economy, a critique of the dominant consumer society and culture rather than questions of deconstruction. In the final section, I seek to explore how Marcuse’s concerns remain linked to contemporary global ethical movements for change. (shrink)

Giulio Tononi's integrated information theory (IIT) proposes explaining consciousness by directly identifying it with integrated information. We examine the construct validity of IIT's measure of consciousness,phi(Φ), by analyzing its formal properties, its relation to key aspects of consciousness, and its co-variation with relevant empirical circumstances. Our analysis shows that IIT's identification of consciousness with the causal efficacy with which differentiated networks accomplish global information transfer (which is what Φ in fact measures) is mistaken. This misidentification has (...) the consequence of requiring the attribution of consciousness to a range of natural systems and artifacts that include, but are not limited to, large-scale electrical power grids, gene-regulation networks, some electronic circuit boards, and social networks. Instead of treating this consequence of the theory as a disconfirmation, IIT embraces it. By regarding these systems as bearers of consciousnessex hypothesi, IIT is led toward the orbit of panpsychist ideation. This departure from science as we know it can be avoided by recognizing the functional misattribution at the heart of IIT's identity claim. We show, for example, what function is actually performed, at least in the human case, by the cortical combination of differentiation with integration that IIT identifies with consciousness. Finally, we examine what lessons may be drawn from IIT's failure to provide a credible account of consciousness for progress in the very active field of research concerned with exploring the phenomenon from formal and neural points of view. (shrink)

Much existing economic theory overlooks ethics. Rather than situating the market and values at separate extremes of a continuum, Ethics and the Market contends that the two are necessarily and intimately related. This volume brings together some of the best work in the social economics tradition, with contributions on the social economy, social capital, identity, ethnicity and development, the household, externalities, international finance, capability, and pedagogy. Proceeding from an examination of the moral implications of markets, the book (...) goes on to explore such themes as the institutional arrangements of social economies, individual and household decision-making, and economic development in a global context. Ethics and the Market illuminates the diverse and dynamic theoretical approaches that are employed in social economics, reflecting on their continuously evolving relationship with neoclassical economics. This book will prove vital reading for students and academics in the fields of Economics, Sociology, Gender Studies, and Public Policy. (shrink)

The environmental degradation caused by industrial agriculture, as well as the resulting social and health consequences, creates an urgency to rethink food production by expanding the moral imagination to include agricultural practices. Agricultural practices presume human use of the earth and acknowledge human dependence on the biotic community, and these relations mean that agriculture presents a separate set of considerations in the broader field of environmental ethics. Many scholars and activists have argued persuasively that we need new stories to (...) rethink agricultural practice, however, the link—the story that does and can shape agricultural practice—has not yet been fully articulated in environmental discourse. My analysis explores how language has shaped existing agricultural models and, more important, the potential of story to influence agricultural practice. To do this, I draw upon cognitive theory to illustrate how metaphoric and narrative language structures thought and influences practice, beginning with my contention that industrial agriculture relies on a discourse of mechanistic relations between humans and a passive earth, language that has naturalized the chemically intensive monocultures prevalent in much of the American Midwest. However, alternative agricultures, including organic agriculture, agro-ecology, and ecological agriculture, emphasize qualities such as interdependence and reciprocity and do so as a deliberate response to the perceived inadequacies of industrial agriculture and its governing narrative. Exploring the different discourses of agricultural systems can help us think through different modalities for human relations with the biotic community and demonstrate story’s potential role in altering practice. (shrink)

Environmental ethics has been compared to a bicycle brake on an international jet airliner; it is ineffective. Here I show how and why an ecological ethics based on process philosophy could be effective against the forces driving global environmental destruction. However, this will involve a radical transformation in what are taken to be the problems of ethics and how ethical philosophy is understood. Ethics needs to be centrally concerned with the virtues required to develop and sustain desirable social forms. (...) To address global environmental problems ecological ethics must concern itself with the virtues required to develop and sustain democracy. Developing these virtues, it is argued, will involve reversing the growing fragmentation of work to revive a feeling of responsibility for creating a better world. Such an ethics must not only provide guidance for action, but also provide people with a sense of their place in and role in history and nature and an inspiring vision to motivate them to work for a better world. Process philosophy can provide such an ecological ethics not only because it can justify respect for all living beings, but also because it is a revolt against the fragmentation of intellectual, cultural, and social life which led to the trivialization of philosophy in the first place. (shrink)

Work on global ethics looks at ethical connections on a global scale. It should link closely to environmental ethics, recognizing that we live in unified social-ecological systems, and to development ethics, attending systematically to the lives and interests of contemporary and future poor, marginal and vulnerable persons and groups within these systems and to the effects on them of forces around the globe. Fulfilling these tasks requires awareness of work outside academic ethics alone, in other disciplines and across disciplines, (...) in public debates and private agendas. A relevant ethics enterprise must engage in systematic description and understanding of the ethical stances that are expressed or hidden in the work of influential stakeholders and analysts, and seek to influence and participate, indeed embed itself, in the expressed and hidden choice-making involved in designing and conducting scientific research and in policy analysis and preparation; it will contribute in value-critical and interpretive policy analysis. It will explore how the allocation of attention and of concern in research and policy depend on perceptions of identity and of degrees of interconnection, and are influenced by the choice or avoidance of humanistic interpretive methodologies. The paper illustrates these themes with reference to the study of climate change. (shrink)

In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research – “Can machines have emotions?” – in the context of “social robots”, a new class of machines designed to function as “social partners” for humans. Our aim, however, is not to provide an answer to the question “Can robots have emotions?” Rather we argue that the “robotics of emotion” moves us to reformulate it into a different one – “Can robots affectively coordinate with humans?” Developing a (...) series of arguments relevant to theory of emotion, philosophy of AI, and the epistemology of synthetic models, we argue that the answer to this different question is positive, and that it lays grounds for an innovative ethical approach to emotional robots. This ethical project, which we introduced elsewhere as “synthetic ethics”, rejects the diffused ethical condemnation of emotional robots as “cheating” technology. Synthetic ethics focuses not on an ideological refusal, but on the concrete sustainability of the emerging mixed human-robot social ecologies. On this basis, in contrast to a purely negative ethical approach to social robotics it promotes an analytical case by case ethical inquiry into the type of human flourishing that can result from human-robot affective coordination. (shrink)

This edited volume draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation, conceptualizing race, racial identity, and racism in ways that go beyond traditional modes of psychoanalytic thought Featuring contributions from Lacanian scholars from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts, chapters span a wide breadth of topics including white nationalism and contemporary debates over confederate monuments; emergent theories of race rooted in Afropessimism and postcolonialism; Latinx and other racialized groups; apartheid and (...) American slavery; and applications of Lacan's concepts of the lamella, drive and sexuation to processes of racialization. The collection both reorients readers' understandings of race through its deployment of Lacanian theory and redefines the Lacanian subject through its theorizing of subjectivity in relation to race, racism and racial identification. Lacan and Race will be a definitive text for psychoanalytic theorists and contemporary scholars of race and appeal to readers across the fields of psychology, cultural studies, humanities, politics, and sociology. (shrink)

This paper describes the general structure of an environmental philosophy. There can be many such philosophies, and those with their roots in economic theory have been extensively studied recently. Specific examples cited in the paper include the work of David Pearce and Robert Goodin. Economics-based philosophies can founder on the issue of externalities and a misplaced attempt to provide a comprehensive approach to valuing nature as a bundle of goods and services. It is argued that it is dangerously easy to (...) slide from considering nature as a standing reserve of processes and objects that have the potential to satisfy human desires to the idea that it is nothing more than that. In general, the consequentialist basis of economics limits its usefulness in contributing to informed environmental decisions. But there is room for a sensitive use of institutional environmental economics as a partial guide for our reflections and choices. Any such development should take on board the existence of a plurality of perspectives on fundamental issues and the pluralism of values that can be found within moral theory itself. (shrink)

In this book, Abraham argues that a theological imagination can expand the contours of postcolonial theory through a reexamination of notions of subjectivity, gender, and violence in a dialogical model with Karl Rahner. She raises the question of whether postcolonial theory, with its disavowal of religious agency, can provide an invigorating occasion for Catholic theology.

The Histories of Anthropology Annual presents diverse perspectives on the discipline’s history within a global context, with a goal of increasing awareness and use of historical approaches in teaching, learning, and conducting anthropology. The series includes critical, comparative, analytical, and narrative studies involving all aspects and subfields of anthropology. Volume 11, Historicizing Theories, Identities, and Nations, examines the work and influence of scholars, including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, A. Irving Hallowell, and Edward Westermarck, and anthropological practices (...) and theories in Vietnam and Ukraine as well as the United States. Contributions also focus on the influence of Western thought and practice on anthropological traditions, as well as issues of relativism, physical anthropology, language, epistemology, ethnography, and social synergy. (shrink)

The text questions the idea of transgenderism, or more specifically, the positioning of the androgynous paradigm that is ecological , as a possible Utopian projection into the future; as a radical NO to the present that still has not, regardless of whether we like it or not, fulfilled the possibility of legal and political status for all forms of life.Naturally enough, apart from an interpretation of the androgyne as the archetype of the unity of oppossing energies , I also take (...) into account Kari Weil’s interpretation of the androgyne,according to whose unmasking the androgyne also figures as the misogynous ideal, a construct of the patriarchal ideosphere. Or, as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have proposed – the alternative term gynandrous , since the very structure of the lexeme androgyny reflects the power of the male symbolic vision over the female view of the Universe.Considering the circumstances in Croatia, transgenderism is perceived in the text as an ignored state of affairs, since intersexuals are not categorised in the »Statute on the Structure and Method of Work of the Expert Opinion Component in Implementing Rights from Social Welfare and Other Rights According to Specific Regulations«, which simply means that they have no specific rights under the present social welfare system.By way of the identity of the androgyne as a third gender, which unifies the categories of masculinity and femininity, or, more specifically, by the ecological androgynous paradigm, I consider the attempt to delete the dichotomy of neglected Nature versus culture, as explicated, for example,by the feminist biologist Lynda Birke, and the attempt to achieve a bioethical encounter between the human animal and the ‘nonhuman’ animal, which I define conditionally with the term transspeciesism, which covers the ethical negation of speciesism.Namely, within the framework of eco/feminist theory, the socio-cultural anthropologist Barbara Noske was one of the first to put forward the question of the human relation towards other animals, demanding the establishment of an anthropology of animals, since – even now – only an anthropology of humans exists in relation to animals. (shrink)

Fugitive Politics explores the intersection between politics and ecology, between the requirements for radical change and the unprecedented challenges posed by the global crisis, a dialectic has rarely been addressed in academia. Across eight chapters, Carl Boggs explores how systemic change may be achieved within the current system, while detailing attempts at achieving change within nation states. Boggs states that any notion of revolution seems fanciful in the current climate, contending that controlling elites have concentrated their hold on corporate (...) power along three self-serving fronts: technology (Big Tech) and the surveillance order, militarism and the warfare state, intensification of globalized power. Combined with this Boggs cites the fundamental absence of revolutionary counter-forces, arguing that after decades of subservice relevant, allied to the rise of identity politics and social movements, the Marxist theoretical legacy is now exhausted, and will not provide an exit from the crisis. Boggs concludes that the only possibility for fundamental change will come from an open style of politics, in the Jacobin tradition, operating within the overall structures of the current democratic state. Written for both an academic and general readership, in the US and beyond, Fugitive Politics will be of vital importance to those studying political theory, political philosophy, political history, Marxism and Marxist theory, authoritarian politics, ecology, environmental politics, and climate politics. (shrink)

This article argues that Durkheim’s founding insight – uniquely social phenomena – presents us with both a foundation for the discipline of sociology and the risk that the discipline will become isolated. This, we argue, has happened. Our contention is that the emergent social phenomena need to be understood in relation to, but not reduced to, their biological and psychological substrates. Similarly, there are a number of other characteristics, notably of self-organization, which are distinguishing properties of social (...) phenomena but also of quite different phenomena. The comparison is instructive. We therefore argue for an ecological approach to sociological theory, which has important relationships to the general theories and philosophy of ecology and biology. We explore a number of terminological and conceptual parallels that may inform our understanding of the relation of social theory to these and other disciplines. (shrink)

This chapter considers the philosophical contributions of German writer Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806). Günderrode is an original, though neglected, thinker engaged with German Idealism and Romanticism, whose writings reflect on the same problems that preoccupied other philosophers working in these traditions. Her work participates in debates regarding the question of free will, the nature of the self, the nature of consciousness, what happens to us after we die, the vocation of humankind, the relationship between the self and nature and (...) between these and the Absolute or the divine, the role of gender in social life, ideals for political arrangements, and the pursuit of virtue and beauty. Günderrode’s writings provide a rich and relatively unexplored perspective on these topics. After a biography and overview of Günderrode’s writings, the chapter summarizes key areas of Günderrode’s thought. These include Günderrode’s metaphysical claims, unique accounts of love and death, models of consciousness and identity, political theory (especially regarding revolution), contributions to early nineteenth century understandings of gender, and nascent ethics and aesthetics. The last section of the chapter considers ways that Günderrode might have influenced several well-known nineteenth century thinkers, notably Clemens Brentano, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, and Bettina Brentano-von Arnim – and, through the latter, the Young Hegelians and American Transcendentalism. (shrink)