Submission by 31st July 2021 The relationship between pragmatism and critical realism is open to many interpretations. On the one hand, compared to more traditional approaches, the two approaches s...

Continuing the exploration of a theme that has figured prominently in previous issues of this journal, articles translated for the present issue illuminate various aspects of the fate of philosophy in twentieth-century Russia. The development of philosophy in Russia has encountered extraordinary institutional obstacles for nearly two centuries. Following the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, the tsarist authorities banned the teaching of philosophy in university classrooms as a potential source of revolutionary ideas. The ban was partially modified in 1863 only to (...) permit commentary on certain specified texts of ancient philosophy and was not lifted until 1889. During the 1920s, the Bolsheviks in authority gradually enforced increasingly strict ideological controls on the teaching and publishing of philosophy, so that by the early 1930s no doctrine other than the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy could be taught or advocated in print. (shrink)

In this introduction to a special section on the philosophy of Bat-Ami Bar On, guest editor Court Lewis introduces Jennifer Kling’s article on equitable resettlement of refugees, Wim Laven’s article on meaningful political citizenship, and his own work on the analysis of the violent threat of citizen culture-warriors.

ABSTRACT:After a brief historical introduction, three interpretations of dignity in relation to management theory and business ethics are elaborated: Dignity as a general category, Human Dignity as Inherent and Universal, and Human Dignity as Earned and Contingent. Next, two literature reviews are presented under the headings of “Dignity and Business Research” and “Dignity and Business Ethics Research.” The latter discussion identifies three subcategories of business ethics research involving human dignity: the role of dignity as a cornerstone for paradigmatic shifts, the (...) role of dignity as the ‘ultima ratio’ for the protection of human rights, and the role of dignity in organizing business practices. The article concludes with summaries of the three articles chosen for this special section. (shrink)

Virtue ethics, the authors believe, is distinct and superior to other options because it considers, in the first place, which preferences are worth pursuing, rather than just blindly maximizing preferences, and it takes into account intuitions, emotions and experience, instead of acting solely on abstract universal principles. Moreover, virtue ethics is seen as firmly rooted in human biology and psychology, particularly in our freedom, rationality, and sociability. Work, business, and management are presented as vital areas for the development of virtues, (...) not the least with a view to human flourishing. We conclude by introducing the articles included in this special issue. (shrink)

Virtue ethics, the authors believe, is distinct and superior to other options because it considers, in the first place, which preferences are worth pursuing, rather than just blindly maximizing preferences, and it takes into account intuitions, emotions and experience, instead of acting solely on abstract universal principles. Moreover, virtue ethics is seen as firmly rooted in human biology and psychology, particularly in our freedom, rationality, and sociability. Work, business, and management are presented as vital areas for the development of virtues, (...) not the least with a view to human flourishing. We conclude by introducing the articles included in this special issue. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article reviews four key orientations in environmental ethics that range from an instrumental understanding of sustainability to one that acknowledges the intrinsic value of sustainable behavior. It then shows that the current scholarly discourse around corporate sustainability management—as reflected in environment management, corporate social responsibility, and corporate political activity —mostly favors an instrumental perspective on sustainability. Sustainable business practices are viewed as anthropocentric and are conceptualized as a means to achieve competitive advantage. Based on these observations, we speculate about (...) what corporate sustainability management might look like if it applied ethical orientations that emphasize the intrinsic value of nature. This discussion also includes an introduction to two articles in this special section focused on the role of the environmental manager and sustainability standards, both of which offer paths for incorporating intrinsic valuation of the environment into sustainability management. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this article we set the context for this special issue focusing on individual and organizational reintegration in the aftermath of transgressions that violate ethical and legal boundaries. Following a brief introduction to the topic we provide an overview of each of the four articles selected for this special issue. We then present a number of potentially fruitful empirical, theoretical, and normative directions management and ethics scholars might pursue in order to further advance this evolving literature.

Guest Editor’s introduction to the Monographic Section.

ABSTRACT:We provide a brief history of the business and human rights discourse and scholarship, and an overview of the articles included in the special issue.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guest Editor's Introduction:The Time of Africana PhilosophyOmedi OchiengAfricana philosophy is in the main a philosophy of the present. Many will demur and with good reason. In the first place, in worrying about the definition and animating energies of Africana philosophers, Africana philosophers have looked to the past to furnish answers to the former, and to the future to motivate its orientation to the latter. For Lucius Outlaw, for (...) example, writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Africana philosophy is a third-order, metaphilosophical, umbrella-concept used to bring organizing oversight to various efforts of philosophizing—that is, activities of reflective, critical thinking and articulation and aesthetic expression—engaged in by persons and peoples African and of African descent who were and are indigenous residents of continental Africa and residents of the many African Diasporas worldwide" (2017, first paragraph).If, then, on the one hand, Outlaw's definition points to the past to make intelligible the contours of Africana philosophy—"persons and peoples... of African descent"—it is to the end of mobilizing toward the future. "In all cases," he argues, "the point of much of [Africana] philosophizings has been to confer meaningful orderings on individual and shared living and on natural and social worlds while resolving recurrent, emergent, and radically disruptive challenges to existence so as to survive, endure, and flourish across successive generations." It is striking, for all that, though, that he makes sure to insist on Africana philosophizing, the verb, rather than philosophy, the noun. For Outlaw, "the name [Africana philosophy] does not refer to a particular philosophy, philosophical system, method, or tradition" (2017). Rather, it is primarily a philosophizing, a doing. Where, then, the past and the future are invoked to give Africana philosophy its shape and contours, the doing of Africana philosophy—practices of the moment, of the present—are revealed to be its constitutive marrow.In the history of Africana philosophy few encounters clarify its present stakes as much as the bitter debate that erupted in post-independence African philosophy over whether there could be said to be an African philosophy. For the protagonists and other commentators, those debates seemed overwhelmingly to be fights about the past—specifically, over the [End Page 1] existence of African philosophy in the precolonial past. Those who came to be identified as ethnophilosophers held that worldviews of precolonial African societies constituted coherent systems of thought worthy of the name "philosophy." They were vehemently opposed by those who insisted on a universalist standpoint, led by the redoubtable Beninois Paulin Hountondji. These philosophers argued that those bent on the task of recuperating traditional worldviews were doing anthropology, not philosophy.At first glance, then, it would seem that these debates have little to tell us about the present of African philosophy. Indeed, there is overwhelming weariness among African philosophers regarding the pitched and factionalized disputations that tore through the discipline in the immediate post-independence era. And yet the view that these debates are now passé, relics and distractions from an immature era of a fledgling discipline, cannot account for their stakes; why precisely they were so rancorous, and why, even today, they occasion simmering tensions and embittered eruptions among African philosophers. Ethnophilosophers, after all, were not intent on recuperating the epistemes of traditional African societies out of sheer curiosity. Rather, they were intervening in deeply contested sociopolitical cleavages of their time.Alexis Kagame, for example, is renowned within the field of African philosophy as one of the most prominent ethnophilosophers to have emerged in the mid-twentieth century. His explication of the ontology of the Bantu, as revealed in Bantu languages, ought to be seen as all of a piece with his position as the central court historian and political theorist of the Kingdom of Rwanda. As historian Claudine Vidal (1991) established, Kagame's influential scholarship had as one of its primary goals the justification of a constitutional monarchy. Indeed, half a century after his writings, Rwandese leaders who came to power in the wake of the 1990s genocide would seize on his portrayal of precolonial Rwanda as a pastoral social formation and his testimony to the existence of a Greater Rwanda in justifying their political and... (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We provide a brief history of the business and human rights discourse and scholarship, and an overview of the articles included in the special issue.

Guest editor's introduction to the Monographic Section: "Delia Graff Fara. A celebration of her life and career".

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guest Editor's Introduction:A Moment for KairosTina SkouenHow does one describe a crucial moment, a moment that calls for action? What kinds of time are opened, disclosed, or foreclosed in such moments? This section explores a concept that has a long history in rhetoric and philosophy, but which is urgently called for now, in a time that many think of as critical, catastrophic, or even apocalyptic. Changes in the (...) economy, climate, and the state of our democracies demand urgent attention, and while people disagree on the course to be taken, there is a sense that—this is it!—now is the time. The concept of kairos (from ancient Greek καιρός) comprises both a critical time and a perfect opportunity; it is the right moment to act, even though the word could also be interpreted in a more general sense as referring to the issue of right timing. Considered as "one of the most untranslatable of Greek words," kairos is perhaps related to the verb kurō, "to meet" or "meet accidentally," as when an arrow meets a target, suggesting that there is a spatial component in the temporal kairos.1 The spatial dimension shines through in the earliest uses of the term discussed in both SeungJung Kim's article on ancient Greek visual arts and Robert Sullivan's article on Isocrates (436–338 BCE). According to Sullivan's survey, Isocrates most often employs the word to refer to a specific situation, occasion, state of affairs, or set of circumstances.How do you recognize, let alone seize, this kind of moment, though? The best-known depiction of this difficulty is a portrait of Kairos personified that dates back to Lysippos in the fourth century BCE, reconstructed visually in three dimensions in Kim's essay. In Greek mythology Kairos is the god of golden opportunities, which (as we all know!) tend to pass by too quickly. The portrait shows a winged figure with a flowing forelock that ideally gives you something to hold on to. I like to imagine that if you [End Page 267] manage to arrest this passing instant, time itself comes to an abrupt halt, which throws Kairos's hair out in front of his face.Of course, people do not necessarily see it as positive when someone appears to have captured the moment. At the kairos symposium hosted by art historian Barbara Baert in Brussels in October 2018, W. J. T. Mitchell held up a picture of President Donald Trump's sculpted forelock to illustrate that it all depends on the perspective. Turning the familiar Greek portrait into an image of the opportunist, Mitchell reminded all of us that had gathered to celebrate the legacy of kairos in iconographic, philosophical, theological, semantic, historical, and anthropological studies, of the ethical issues arising in such moments. The question of moral accountability is bound to come up, whether one takes kairos to refer to the act of seizing the moment, involving some form of decision, or to the moment itself, the kairos, which some might claim just seized upon them and carried them away.As Debra Hawhee and Erik Charles White before her have argued, kairos does not seem to be confined by the subjective reason operating in a "rhetorical situation," but it depends on "the forces pushing on the encounter," in addition to instinct and intuition, and possibly on habitual impulses springing from experience (Hawhee 2002, 24–25; White 1987; reconsidered by Brod 2021). Audiences may also have a significant role to play, as Kermit Campbell underscores in his discussion of the symbiosis of call and response in African American churches and his reflection on how Martin Luther King's speech at the 1963 March on Washington replied to a call: "Tell them about the dream, Martin."The moment of kairos may appear spontaneous and deliberate, both at the same time. The classical rhetoricians in fact insisted on the value of preparing for the unexpected, as we try to do in our current crisis management plans. In his essay, Sullivan documents the incredibly nuanced instructions Isocrates gave on how to exploit a prospective opening in all sorts of civic settings. From a rhetorical viewpoint, kairos can appear both as... (shrink)

Guest Editor’s Introduction to "Current Perspectives in Philosophy of Biology".

Guest Editor’s Introduction to "Current Perspectives in Philosophy of Biology".

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guest Editor’s Concluding RemarksMaki SATO 本特別号は戦前・戦後の東京、特に東京帝国大学、東京大学を活躍の場に据えた哲学者たちの智の営みに光をあて特集した初の試みである。「東京学派」との掛け声に対して、いったいどれくらいの論文が集まるのだろうか 、蓋を開けてみるまでは全く分からなかった。特別号編者の一人としては、東京という場で行われた様々な哲学者たちによる知的営みのうち、いつの時代の、どの哲学者が研究対 象となっているのかを知ることは大変興味深かった。巻頭論文としては、『日本哲学小史(Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History)』を上梓されたオハイオ州立大学名誉教授のトマス・カスリス先生に、2019年1月下旬に東京大学東洋文化研究所にて行われた国際ワークショップ「日本哲学と東京大学の哲学」、また同年11月下旬 に東京大学本郷キャンパスにおいて開催された集中講義でお話しいただいた内容に基づき、基調論文を執筆いただいた。快くお引き受け下さったことに、ここに心から感謝の意 を示したい。 今回、収録した論文が取り上げていたのは、井上哲次郎(1856~1944)、清沢満之(1863~1903)、桑木厳翼(1874~1946)、大森荘蔵(1921~1997)である。西周(1829~1897 )がphilosophyを「希哲学」と翻訳してから、新たな学問として日本に哲学が根付き、西洋哲学の解釈から日本独自の哲学へと花開き始めた頃の哲学者が主に取り上げられている。東京の哲学者たちの知的営みの 多くは「京都学派」と比較すると忘却され、埋もれてしまった概念が他にも多々あるだろう。しかしながら、東京という場所において、彼ら哲学者たちが掴もうとしていた新たな概念は、常に確実に日本の中枢、政治や経済 のダイナミックな動向への応答としてあったものである。今後、日本哲学を通して私たち人類の行く先を見据える上でも、東京という場所において活躍した過去の哲学者たちが、言葉や概念で掴もうとしていたものを、本特 集号が、再度、取り上げて見直す一機会にな れば幸いである。 [End Page 125]This special issue is the first attempt to highlight the intellectual activities of philosophers who were active in prewar and post-war Tokyo, particularly at the Tokyo Imperial University and the University of Tokyo. I had no idea how many papers we would receive under the special issue “Tokyo School” until we (...) closed our call for papers. As one of the editors of the special issue, it was exciting to know, among the intellectual activities conducted by various philosophers based in Tokyo, which philosophers were the subjects of contemporary research from which period. It is fascinating to see and to read how the philosophical thinking of the past may resonate and still keep on inspiring us to face humanity’s issues of the twenty-first century.For the opening article, we invited Professor Emeritus Thomas P. Kasulis of Ohio State University, who published Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History back in 2018, to write a keynote paper. He kindly sent us an article based on his presentations at the international workshop “Japanese Philosophy and the Philosophy of the University of Tokyo” held in late January 2019 at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia and during an intensive lecture held in late November 2019 at the Hongo Campus. I would like to express our sincere gratitude to him for contributing to this special issue.The papers included in this volume cover Inoue Tetsujiro (1856–1944), Kiyosawa Manshi (1863–1903), Kuwaki Genyoku (1874–1946), and Omori Shozo (1921–97). The focus of this volume is on philosophers from the period when philosophy took root in Japan as a new discipline after Nishi Amane (1829–97) translated the word “philosophy” as tetsugaku. The late nineteenth to the early twentieth century was a transition period when philosophical thoughts began to blossom from an interpretation of Western philosophy into a unique style of Japanese philosophy, which I see as an attempt at amalgamation to close the gap between West and East.Compared to the well-studied Kyoto School centered around Nishida, from the Tokyo School there are probably many other concepts that have been forgotten and buried. The new concepts that philosophers of Tokyo were trying to grasp were always a response to the significant trends of the time, including responses to the dynamism of Japan’s political and economic situation, Tokyo being the capital of Japan. We hope that this special issue will provide [End Page 126] an opportunity to take a fresh look at and discover what the philosophers active in Tokyo were trying to grasp through words and concepts that still engage well with universal questions that remain relevant to the humanity of the current time. [End Page 127]Copyright © 2023 State University of New York Press... (shrink)

We are most thankful to Forum Philosophicum, and its Editor-in-Chief Marcin Podbielski, for the invitation to act as guest editors in a special issue dedicated to looking at Maximus the Confessor from a philosophical perspective—by which we mean both the philosophical efflorescence of Maximus’ thought per se, approached within its historical context, and the attempt to find Maximian solutions to contemporary philosophical problems or to engage Maximus’ thought in dialogue with modern philosophy. In many ways, this special issue (...) is a sister volume to the book Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher. Both form parts of a sustained attempt at highlighting Maximus the Confessor’s relevance for philosophical inquiry, without denying the explicitly theological nature of his thought in doing so. Believing that there is much philosophical fecundity in this approach, we remain with the hope that it will be continued. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guest Editor’s IntroductionNakajima Takahiro 「東京学派」とは聞きなれない名称であろう。日本研究において「京都学派」は大変よく知られている。たとえ「京都学派」が、「無の論理は論理ではない」と述べた上で、戸坂潤が発明した批判的な概念であったとしても 、現在ではそれは西田幾多郎や田辺元を中心とした一大哲学運動として世界的に認知されている。ところが、西田にしても田辺にしてももともとは東京帝国大学で学んだ学生であった。また、戦前においては、井上哲次郎か ら桑木厳翼へと続く東京帝国大学哲学科の流れは、当時の社会状況と相互に影響しあって、一定の意義を示していたのである。また、大森荘蔵、廣松渉、坂部恵といった戦後の東京大学の哲学者たちは、「京都学派」の問題 系を乗り越えることを重視していた。 この特別号では、発見的概念として「東京学派」を用いて、戦前・戦後におけるその意義と広がりを探究することにした。それは東京大学もしくは東京帝国大学に限定されたものではなく、それ以外の東京圏の大学との相互 交流も含まれるものである。「京都学派」に対しては、政治との距離をどう測るかがしばしば議論されてきたが、「東京学派」は政治により密着したものである。日本の近代の哲学の有している政治性そして倫理性を考える のであれば、やはり「東京学派」の議論は避けて通る ことのできないものである。 無論、「学派」というほどのまとまりを「東京学派」が有しているわけではないことも確かである。西田幾多郎が「京都学派」で果たした中心性は、「東京学派」にはない。そこで、トマス・カスリスが示唆するように、「 学派」の代わりに「サークル」や「スタイル」という言葉を使った方がより正確かもしれない。それでも、あえて「東京学派」と呼ぶのは、「京都学派」に比べて関心を持たれることの少ない、しかし当時は圧倒的な影響力 を有し、戦後決定的に忘却されていった東京の哲学者たちに光をあて、近代日本の哲学の総体を明らかにしたいからである。「東京学派」の研究は緒についたばかりである。今後、国際的な研究の高まりを期待しながら擱筆 する。The “Tokyo School” may be an unfamiliar term to readers. The Kyoto School is very well known in Japanese studies. Even if the Kyoto School is a critical concept invented by Tosaka Jun, who stated [End Page 2] that “the logic of nothingness is not logic,” it is now recognized worldwide as a major philosophical movement led by Nishida Kitarō and (...) Tanabe Hajime. However, both Nishida and Tanabe were originally students at Tokyo Imperial University. In addition, before the war, the output of the Department of Philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University, from Inoue Tetsujirō to Kuwaki Gen’yoku, had a certain significance because it interacted with the social conditions of the time. In addition, postwar philosophers at the University of Tokyo, such as Ōmori Shōzō, Hiromatsu Wataru, and Sakabe Megumi emphasized overcoming the problematics of the Kyoto School.In this special issue, we use the Tokyo School as a heuristic concept to explore its significance and spread in the prewar and postwar periods. It is not limited to the University of Tokyo or Tokyo Imperial University but includes interactions with other universities in the Tokyo area. While the Kyoto School has often been discussed in terms of how to measure its distance from politics, the Tokyo School is more closely connected to politics. If we consider the political and ethical dimensions of modern Japanese philosophy, we cannot avoid discussing the Tokyo School.Of course, it is true that the Tokyo School is not as coherent as a “school.” The central role that Nishida fulfilled in the Kyoto School is perhaps lacking in the Tokyo School. Therefore, as Thomas P. Kasulis suggests, it might be more accurate to use the term “circle” or “style” instead of “school.” Nevertheless, I dare to call it the Tokyo School because I would like to shed light on the Tokyo philosophers who were less popular than those of the Kyoto School but whose influence was overwhelming at the time and who were definitively forgotten after the war, so as to clarify the totality of philosophy in modern Japan.Research on the Tokyo School has only just begun. I am writing this introductory note in anticipation of further international research on the Tokyo School. [End Page 3]Copyright © 2023 State University of New York Press... (shrink)

The theme of this special issue is Post-truth. No doubt it was my exasperation with the terminological state of our collective situation that incited me in the spring of 2017 to settle upon it. What, exactly, does the hyphenated couplet mean or to what does it refer? What is its significance or sense? How is it being used, by whom, for what purpose, and with what consequences—for whom? And if, as was being asserted on nearly every side, we currently find (...) ourselves in post-truth, how might we ever get out, presuming we may one day want as much? The original contributions by Sarah Burgess, James Crosswhite, Jason David Myres, Bradford Vivian, and Eric King Watts published herein go a long way toward answering these... (shrink)

Behavioral ethics is an emerging field that takes an empirical, social scientific approach to the study of business ethics. In this special issue, we include six articles that fall within the domain of behavioral ethics and that focus on three themes—moral awareness, ethical decision making, and reactions to unethical behavior. Each of the articles sheds additional light on the specific issues addressed. However, we hope this special issue will have an impact beyond that of the new insights offered in these (...) articles, by stimulating evenmore research in this burgeoning field. (shrink)

This is the guest editors' preface to the Discipline Filosofiche special issue on Knowledge and Justification.

Excerpt from Guest Editor's Note, from Special Issue: Nietzsche and Religion. The papers in this themed edition of the Journal are a selection drawn from those given at the Eighth Annual Conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society held at the University of Greenwich in 11-13 September 1998.

ABSTRACT:This article reviews a conversation between business ethicists and feminist scholars begun in the early 1990s and traces the development of that conversation in relation to feminist theory. A bibliographic analysis of the business ethics and corporate social responsibility literatures over a twenty-five-year period elucidates the degree to which gender has been a salient concern, the methodologies adopted, and the ways in which gender has been analyzed. Identifying significant limitations to the incorporation of feminist theory in these literatures, we discuss (...) how feminist scholarship relating to behavior, organizations, and economics could be integrated. We suggest that a better integration of feminist theory would strengthen BE/CSR research, and point to new research directions and agendas arising from our approach. (shrink)

This special issue is devoted to highlighting thinkers who have been overlooked within business ethics and who have important contributions to make to our field. We make the case that, as scholars of a hybrid discipline that also aims to address important issues of business practice, we need to look continually for new sources of insight and wisdom that can both enrich our discourse and improve our ability to generate ideas that have a positive impact on business practice. In this (...) introductory essay, we discuss our rationale for creating this special issue, summarize the articles contained within, and close with thoughts on its significance for the field going forward. (shrink)

Since our visual perception of physical things essentially involves our identifying objects by their colours, any theory of visual perception must contain some account of the colours of things. The central problem with colour has to do with relating our normal, everyday colour perceptions to what science, i.e. physics, teaches us about physical objects and their qualities. Although we perceive colours as categorical surface properties of things, colour perceptions are explained by introducing physical properties like reflectance profiles or dispositions to (...) cause certain experiences in normal human perceivers. Hence, it seems as if colours as they are experienced by us have no place in the physical world, because they are fundamentally different from the properties which we ascribe to physical objects in scientific accounts of colour perceptions. This special issue on perspectives on colour perception presents new suggestions to solve to this major problem. (shrink)

Books played a unique role during the Cultural Revolution, especially when it came to their relationship with the younger generation of that tumultuous era.