Evolution can be a “weasel word” unless circumscribed to mean only a morphological change over time. When this is done, the fact of what can be distinguished from the faith of how. I believe that evolution is purely a natural process, but recognizing that everyone creates his or her own God, I feel justified in giving the name God to that mysterious presence in every interaction that causes transformation, since this is what gives the universe its dynamism. I relate how (...) this God concept informs my religious and ethical life and gives my life meaning and purpose. (shrink)

I argue that it is through an integrative dialogue based on the Ijing model of cooperative and cyclical change rather, than a Marxist or neo-Marxist dialectical model of change based upon the Hegelian model of conflict and replacement, that promises the greatest possibility of peaceful coexistence. As a case study of a dialogue between civilizations, I utilize both a mythical and an historical encounter between Martin Buber, representing the West, and Zhuangzi, representing the East. I show that despite the vast (...) temporal, historic, linguistic and cultural differences, that the dialogue between Zhuangzi and Buber is complementary and not adversarial. (shrink)

Enlightenment thought and its contemporary followers usually support two contradictory principles simultaneously. The first is universality. Truth is universal because it is truth for all. Claims to universality are made in logic and science, but also in areas that are culturally or politically controversial. Recently, universalism has become a key term to express a fundamental critique of identity politics. For much of European history, Christianity provided such a universal truth. But with the decline of its cultural hegemony and the rise (...) of particular nation-states, conflicting truth claims became weapons in violent conflicts, leading Hobbes to argue that dangerous truth claims must be neutralized by robust political power. In the eighteenth century, rationalism became more optimistic, interpreting universalism as cosmopolitanism based on universal reason and progress through history. The second principle is historicism, which is the self-reflexive look at the historical origins of universal claims and theories. Historicism emerged in the nineteenth century as a response to the application of rationalism to history. It challenged the universal claims of the French Revolution, emphasizing instead the unique value of each historical entity. This revealed a fundamental paradox: when universalism becomes self-reflexive, it recognizes that it has non-universal historical origins, thereby undermining itself. After the devastation of World War II and the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) represented a significant effort toward a new universalism. It sought to establish human rights as universal principles for the emerging world order. But history repeated itself: Historicism once again weakened confidence in human rights. The enemies of human rights take advantage of this weakness. We therefore have to live with the paradox that universalism is necessary because humanity shares a single world, but that historical self-reflection is also unavoidable. In other words, the Enlightenment principle of universalism must accept historicism as an integral part of itself. (shrink)

Menachem M. Kellner is an American-born scholar of Jewish philosophy, an educator, and a public intellectual who lives in Israel. For over three decades he taught at the University of Haifa, where he held the Sir Isaac and Lady Edith Wolfson Chair of Jewish Religious Thought as well as several high-level administrative positions. Currently he teaches Jewish philosophy at Shalem College, Israel's first liberal arts college, which seeks to integrate Western and Jewish texts. Trained in ethics and political philosophy, Kellner (...) specializes in medieval Jewish philosophy, arguing that Maimonides' rationalist universalism should serve as the ideal for contemporary Jewish life. Creatively fusing Zionism, modern Orthodoxy, and democracy, his vision of Judaism is open to and engaged with the modern world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Realism, Universalism, and the Science of the HumanAmanda Anderson (bio)Satya P. Mohanty. Literary Theory and the Claims of History: Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicultural Politics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997.Martha C. Nussbaum. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997.It is arguably a peculiar fact that a book announcing itself as a defense of objectivity and realism would begin by assuring readers of the political efficacy (...) of its theories. After all, the critique of objectivity and realism within progressive cultural criticism of the past several decades has taken for granted that claims to objectivity and realism are suspicious in part because of their pretense to value-neutrality. But Satya P. Mohanty’s ambitious and wide-ranging Literary Theory and the Claims of History joins with other recent attempts to lay claim to a refurbished realism that not only overcomes variously construed limitations of postmodernism but fully answers to the charges leveled against “traditional” objectivity or “naïve” realism [see Alcoff; Livingston]. Such a project can in part be analyzed against a broader critique of postmodernism and poststructuralism advanced through reconsideration of Enlightenment ideals, including, most prominently, the ideals of universalism and its less abstract cousin, cosmopolitanism [see Anderson]. The reconstructions of both universalism and realism have claimed a greater intellectual integrity and coherence than the forms of postmodernism that they challenge and a more promising ethico-political vision, one that more convincingly acknowledges the place and claims of marginalized others. These reconstructive projects thus fundamentally challenge the familiar postmodernist idea that claims to universalism or objectivity themselves enact forms of privilege or exclusion that inherently disable any properly egalitarian or nonviolent relation to others.Mohanty would appear to combine the universalist and realist ambitions, insofar as he asserts a moral position based on Kantian notions of autonomy and dignity at the same time that, in epistemological terms, he elaborates a “postpositivist realist alternative.” Maintaining that the critique of objectivity within postmodernism is propped up by an outdated understanding of scientific method and theory, he argues that the more sophisticated theories within current philosophy of science elaborate epistemological models that are fully compatible with a generalized hermeneutical method, precisely because they acknowledge both the theory-laden nature of all inquiry and the larger social and historical contexts of knowledge and experience. Before elaborating this realist alternative, however, Mohanty situates his project by forwarding a number of critiques of “constructivist postmodernism,” critiques that enable us to better gauge the motivations behind his work. Foregrounded at the start are what Mohanty sees as the [End Page 3] harmful political and ethical consequences of relativism, skepticism, and constructivism. According to Mohanty, while the claims for diversity and difference in the 1960s “had a political edge,” at this historical moment they are used primarily for conservative ends, via a state-sponsored bland multiculturalism that diverts attention from the blunt material issues of race politics [17]. In broader ethico-political terms, moreover, relativist arguments that display skepticism toward the possibilities for rational exchange between variously construed collectivities and cultures lead not to a proper respect for the other but rather to indifference. As Mohanty puts it, to deny the possibility of “general criteria” for “interpretive validity” is “to assert that all spaces are equivalent, that they have equal value, that since the lowest common principle of evaluation is all that I can invoke, I cannot—and consequently need not—think about how your space impinges on mine or how my history is defined together with yours. If that is the case, I may have started by declaring a pious political wish, but I end by denying that I need to take you seriously” [131; Mohanty’s emphasis].Beyond these harmful consequences, however, lies a more fundamental problem. In its monolithic assault on Western Reason and the unified subject of humanism, constructivist postmodernism has deprived itself of any coherent account of human agency and rationality. Without a philosophical anthropology establishing the “capacities, tasks, and limits that might make up a specifically human existence,” Mohanty argues, it becomes impossible to account properly for cultural practices and historical agency, for the self-understanding of cultures and the historical transformations they enact [138... (shrink)

‘Universalist’ moral principles have fallen into disfavour because too often they have been pretexts for unilateral impositions upon others, whether domestically or internationally. Too widely neglected has been Kant’s specifically Critical re-analysis of the scope and character of rational justification in all non-formal domains, including the entirety of epistemology and moral philosophy, including both justice and ethics. Rational judgment is inherently normative because it is in part constituted by our self-assessment of whether the considerations we now integrate into a (...) candidate judgment have been integrated as they ought, so as to form a cogent, justifiable judgment. Constitutive of this self-assessment is that rational judgments must be based upon considerations which can be communicated to all others, such that they too can assess them as sufficiently cogent justification; also constitutive of this rational self-assessment is that we actually engage with others who do assess our judgments. Kant’s Critical principles rule out in principle any unilateral imposition upon others, whether in cognition or morals. Using Kant’s Critical principles and methods in connection with ‘practical anthropology’ and the enormously important domain of acquired rights and obligations shows how Kant had already justified fundamentally universal principles of justice which can be institutionalised in variously distinctive cultures, and which form the proper bases for our acquired, specifically social rights and obligations, including those of friendship and community. (shrink)

The author attempts to advance and substantiate a novel theoretical - cosmist1 - approach to reaching the end of integrative universal, truly humane, bio-science.2The work is performed on the original basis of philosophical cosmology, ontology of Absolute Cosmist Wholism, cosmist epistemology, anthropology, and the core principle of CosmoBiotypology. Cosmist theory leads to a person-driven science that is able to integrate subjective and objective knowledge: humankind's personal experience with psychological, biological, and sociological knowledge about the person. In this, the cosmist approach (...) rises to a novel - cosmist functional universal - level of bio-reductionism that relies ultimately on objective scientific knowledge but, at the same time, is primarily person-driven: based on the feelings and perceptions of a person. The core notion of the theory is a person's Basic (Cosmist) Functionality, the realization of which leads to man's3entire ontogenetic well-being.4. (shrink)

There are many advantages and disadvantages to central locations. These have shown themselves in the long course of European history. In times of peace, there are important economic and cultural advantages (to illustrate: the present area of the Czech Republic was the richest country in Europe between the two World Wars). There are cross-currents of trade and culture in central Europe of great advantage. For, cultural cross-currents represent a potential benefit in comprehension and cultural growth. But under threat of large-scale (...) conflict, these locations have proved extremely dangerous. Historically, Germany and Austria may be regarded as having had two chief models of their relationships to Europe. In the Holy Roman Empire, Germany was at the center of an aspiring “universalistic” European cosmopolitanism. (In some ways similar to the present situation of the European Union.) Austria maintained a great multi¬cultural empire, until it was destroyed in the First Word War. Generally, middle-European powers have promoted the integration of European diversity, when peace and stability have been plausible objectives. But when European diversity has declined toward ethnic or national conflict, Germany has drawn away from Europe and into itself, seeking inner unity and distinctness to protect it against possible combinations of enemies. This is true of central Europe generally, in degree, but interest often centers on Germany. Generally, central Europe is a cultural pressure cooker. (shrink)

The emergence of the European Union as an autonomous actor, to some degree independent of its member states, raises the issue of a common European identity. Nowadays, this identity is predominantly understood in universalistic terms. This is evident in Jürgen Habermas’ constitutional patriotism, which represents an attempt to integrate the EU on the basis of universal legal-political norms. This universalism is, however, problematic because identity is a relational notion and requires the constitution of a particular boundary. Although Habermas admits the (...) necessity of drawing a distinction between the inside and the outside, his universalistic approach, which ignores cultural aspects, prevents the marking out of a substantive boundary. By contrast, the article asserts the view that European identity can be delineated only in virtue of its being distinct from some concrete out-groups and that, in addition to the normative dimension, redefined as particular, such an identity must also include a value one. (shrink)

The twenty-first century so far has seen the global rise of authoritarian populism, systematic racism, and dogmatic metaphysics. Even though these events demonstrate the growth of an age of 'unreason', in this original and compelling book John Roberts resists the assumption that such thinking displays an unthinking irrationality or loss of reason; instead he asserts that an important feature of modern reactionary politics is that it offers a supposedly convincing integration of the particular and the universal. This move is defined (...) by what Roberts calls the 'reasoning of unreason' and has deep roots in the history of Western thought and politics. Tracing the dark history of enlightenment-disenlightenment, John Roberts explores 'the reasoning of unreason' across centuries from Aquinas, William of Ockham, the most important treatise on witchcraft Malleus Maleficarum, Locke, Kant, and Count Arthur de Gobineau, to Social Darwinism, Nazism, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Friedrich von Hayek. Roberts provides a new set of philosophical-political tools to understand the formation and denigration of the rational subject and the current reinvestment in various forms of political unreason globally. The Reasoning of Unreason is the first book to draw on the philosophy of reason, political philosophy, political theory and political history, in order to produce a dialectical account of the 'making of reason' internal to the forces of unreason and the limits of reason. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars of Confucian ethics have debated on important issues such as whether Confucian ethics embraces, or should embrace, universal values and impartiality. Some have argued that Confucian ethics integrates both care and justice, and that Confucian ethics is both particularistic and universalistic. In this essay, I will defend a view of the relation between care and justice and the relation between care ethics and justice ethics on the basis of the notion of 'configuration of values,' and (...) show why care ethics and justice ethics cannot be integrated. I will support this view by a reading of some pertinent passages in the Mencius. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reclaiming the Integration of Body and MindDeborah SpragueThe week before New Year’s Day has often spurred me to evaluate my personal path. I courted my own permission to apply to graduate school, charting scenarios, figuring options, but still I held back. Browsing the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School website, I found a unique course offering: Deepening the Heart of Wisdom: Buddhist Christian Contemplative Practice and Dialogue. I knew I (...) had to take it! Class was going to start in a week and as yet I hadn’t even applied to the school’s graduate program. In a flurry I requested transcripts, garnered recommendations, and considered childcare options. My desire to engage this particular dialogue grew through my Christian practice of Centering Prayer1 and my Episcopal parish’s contemplative interfaith Vital Conversations program.These vital conversations began with an intentional time of silence in which we prepared the “eye of the heart” to perceive the conversation at a deeper level. Our rector invited a guest from a different faith tradition each month.2 He engaged the guest in questions and dialogue regarding his or her spiritual practices and personal story. Then, the guest received questions from the group. After hearing a Buddhist guest and visiting the local Zen center, I knew my own spiritual formation would be broadened and deepened by taking the two-week, intensive format course. Because actual spiritual practice from both traditions comprised a significant portion of the class, I surmised this course would foster a more complete, integrated form of understanding the two traditions.This essay will explore the contemplative pedagogy of this course, wherein the instructors hoped “students [would] walk away with a visceral understanding of these traditions as full-body disciplines for transforming the mind and heart.”3 First, I will give a brief description of the class participants and discuss the types of spiritual practices we encountered from each tradition. Then, I will share my experiences related to those practices and how the structure of the course supported an integrated epistemology. Finally, I will consider the phenomenon of Christian interest in Buddhist practices and what that implies about popular Christianity and its potential to become a fuller version of itself. [End Page 101]The student population of this class was largely Christian, with some Unitarian Universalists, a pagan, and an agnostic as well. That said, the spectrum of Christians reflected mainline denominations as well as some persons with roots in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. As might be expected from a varied group, the Christologies of participants varied from creedal to acreedal. This group came together to participate in a variety of Christian and Zen Buddhist spiritual practices.The class engaged the following practices according to Sōtō Zen: zazen, contemplative walking as a group, and, near the end of the course, Rev. Dr. Hickey led us in a portion of the Sōtō-shū morning service. Every class began with at least fifteen minutes of zazen, which gradually increased as the class progressed. Daily practice of the same meditation technique allowed us to enter that particular practice in a sustained way.In contrast to our Zen practice, we experienced a different type of Christian spiritual practice with each class session. This approach acquainted students with a variety of traditions but did not allow experiential depth in any one particular mode. The students and instructors took part in Taizé chanting,4 chanting of the Psalms from the Daily Office, lectio divina,5 praying with icons,6 the Jesus Prayer,7 the Rosary,8 and two guided reflections: an Ignatian9 meditation on a gospel text, and a meditation developed by Christian contemplative Anthony De Mello. I wondered how our experience of the class would have changed had the Christian practice focused on one or two types, in a sustained, daily manner. Perhaps the rationale for surveying a wide variety of practices reflected the need for Western Christians to gain familiarity with their own contemplative traditions.I consider Christianity’s analog to zazen to be Centering Prayer, because it is also based in no-thought. However, Centering Prayer was not included in our experience of spiritual practices. If we conceive of two... (shrink)

. The article is based on the analysis of the works of the famous Ukrainian thinker from Canada, Yuriy Mulyk-Lutsyk, who in the mid-twentieth century. deeply considered the state of the Ukrainian diaspora, its search for a strategy of its development abroad within the limits of ethnic particularism and international universalism. His thoughts have not lost their relevance today, as new waves of migration pose the same questions to Ukrainians: whether to remain or dissolve as a national community among a (...) multiethnic and multicultural world. The migrants, diasporans, whose grandchildren have lost their connection with their historical homeland and are part of other multinational states, are particularly disturbed by those outside Ukraine. The main problem of the migrants and diasporas of that time, according to Mulyk-Lutsyk, was that they did not distinguish between ethnic particularism and interethnic universalism, identifying or substituting one another. This led to radical one-sidedness: the Ukrainians cared for one or the other in themselves. The main reason for this imbalance according to the thinker was that Ukrainians intellectually were not ready to migrate. They did not have time to realize their ethnic identity, their uniqueness, as they got into millstone universalism, which led them to "spiritual turmoil, gypsyism". Instead of meeting with other worlds, Ukrainians experienced a cultural trauma. It is possible to overcome the latter by realizing the equality of the universal and the specific, the universal and the ethnic, which are two "natural signs of one and the same". The Ukrainians should understand that they/he are/is human, because he has such physical and spiritual attributes that are common to all people; at the same time he is a member of this ethnic community because it contains such features that are not present and cannot be found in other ethnic communities. Although universal and specific are opposite to one another, however, in the person they exist in combination both as a physical indivisible unity and as a spiritual one. Yu.Mulyk-Lutsyk realized that integration into a multidimensional space, sometimes so alien, but to be friendly for himself, is very difficult. He insisted on fostering within himself both national and universal, where the particular was affirmed through the universal and the universal manifested in the particular. Eventually the thinker urged: if the ethnic community understands what the essence of its ethnicism is, that is, it realizes the secret connection between ethnic content and ethnic form and learns the absolute, natural boundaries of ethnicism, which are not free to artificially, illegally, unnaturally, contraband; and if the ethnic community at the same time understands the essence of its universalism, that is, it realizes the secret connection between human content and human form, and learns the absolute, natural limits of humanity, in which it is not free to artificially, illegally, unnaturally, contraband if and only then the ethnic community in general and each of its constituent units in particular will form a unity on a natural basis - national unity. Knowledge of the experience gained by the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada may be of use to those who wish to migrate to other countries and other cultural worlds. (shrink)

Critics have pointed out that the content and sequence of mystical development reported by different traditions do not seem very congruous with the contention that there is a universal path of mystical development. I propose a model of mystical development that is more subtle than traditional ‘invariant hierarchical’ models, and which explains how the apparently differing accounts of mystical development between traditions and thinkers can be reconciled with each other in a more convincing fashion, and brought together under one umbrella. (...) The model preserves both the objective core of perennialism and the culturally subjective element of mystical ‘specialization’ that is undeniably evidenced in the mystical literature, and which hierarchical and invariant ‘universalist’ accounts struggle to integrate. (shrink)

SSH should response to challenges of the integrating European societies. The EU Lisbon Strategy envisions their future as knowledge-based. Knowledge-based economies ought to be accompanied by knowledge-based societies. Timely task of SSH is to make it possible to achieve society of knowledge and wisdom together. This may save diversity and multicultural values, enabling synergy and universalism.

The purpose of this investigation is to define, first, wisdom from the point of view of the cognitive approach, and, second, to integrate this definition with the aspects of wisdom as defined by the semantic, cognitive, psychological approaches as well as to a certain degree by the philosophical approach. The research is based on an interdisciplinary view of the main aspects of wisdom’s development and their interdependency. Among the findings are: wisdom is information reflecting good judgment and choice; it is (...) the final cognition unit in the Semantic Ladder and has different levels of scope and quality depending on the four minds, namely basic, whole, global and universal mind, which are supported by the art of living, understood as the reflection of behavioral aspects of wisdom within the philosophical framework of the hierarchy of possible purposes of one’s life. Practical implications: Wisdom can be accomplished in all phases of living. Social implication: The quest for wisdom should be achieved by teaching wisdom once it is defined. Originality: This investigation, by providing an interdisciplinary and civilizational approach, allows for the teaching and application of wisdom in a typical manner as is done by other disciplines and their issues. (shrink)

Studies of ancient funerary rituals lead to the philosophical problem of the opposition of life and death. Ancient cultural forms that remove this opposition are based on the specifically irrational and correlate with irrational ideas about the soul and its destination after death. The modern rational mind eliminates these forms. Based on an ontologically balanced paradigmatic synthetic approach, considering the features of ontology and myth, a dynamic model of the archaic perception of death—metaphysics of overcoming—was formed. This integrated model most (...) accurately reflects the pre-philosophical way of the transcendence of the being. The metaphysics of overcoming can be the core of the ancient ritual comprehension theory. (shrink)

The author reflects on the peculiarity of European integration suggesting that its unique characteristics calls for a completely new approach which demands a great deal of creativity in our thinking. Such creativity is needed, first of all, in a very discourse applied to the European integration. Conceptual creativity must help us to depart from the centuries old ideas which do not allow us to see the specificity of the new political reality in Europe. Next, there is a need to overcome (...) two dilemmas that limit our imagination in building new conceptual framework of integrating Europe. These are: the dilemma of liberal or social Europe and the dilemma of federal or intergovernmental Europe. Neither of these two oppositions takes into consideration the unprecedented nature of European Union. In conclusion the author suggests that the way out of the mentioned dilemmas is also through a radical rebuilding of a European integration discourse which must concentrate rather on “solidarity” than on “democracy” as its organizing concept. (shrink)

European integration needs to be analyzed in terms that address the normative self-understanding of the emerging polity or, in other words, the self-understanding of European modernity. While it is often argued that such European self-understanding is either entirely indistinct from the general self-understanding of the West, i.e. a commitment to human rights and liberal democracy, or highly problematic, because it makes overly ‘thick’ presuppositions, which are untenable against the background of European cultural diversity and risk to revive non-liberal European political (...) traditions, the attempt here to reconstruct European political modernity suggests that the general, universalist commitment to liberal democracy is insufficient to understand Western polities, and it aims to propose this argument by elaborating a more complex concept of political modernity than can usually be found in political theory. The struggles about European political modernity across history are interpreted with a view to understanding how the self-understanding of a modern polity evolved and changed. (shrink)

One of the challenges arising from globalization viewed as a multi-dimensional phenomenon is the possibility of a moral integration of the world or at least that of finding some plausible common ground for a meaningful ethical dialogue. Overcoming the moral frag- mentation of the modern world is made even more difficult in light of the diversity of views in moral theory. Is global ethics even possible in the light of many disagreements about metaethical and normative questions? Moral theory faces a (...) challenge of providing a usable framework for moral discussion as a precondition for moral integration. In his latest book Robert Audi proposes a model of pluralistic universalism as a combination of most of the historically influential moral theories, namely, virtue ethics, Kantianism and utilitarianism. The three central values being advocated are freedom, justice and happiness. I discuss this proposal and point to the role that pluralistic intuitionism plays in it. (shrink)

This text is an integrated and comprehensive account of theories of justice and judgement in contemporary political and moral philosophy. It offers a critical examination of judgement and normative validity in the recent works of Rawls, Habermas, Ackerman, Michaleman, and Dworkin. Ferrara demonstrates how the understanding of justice and normative validity, since the linguistic turn in philosophy, is defined in terms of reflective judgement. This demonstration comprises of an historical overview of the judgement model in contemporary political philosophy that focuses (...) on Rawls on ` justice as fairness' and Habermas on the discourse theory of law and the public sphere. The discussion then examines situated judgement; the work of Ackerman on the function of the constitution; and Michaelman on deliberative democracy. Justice and Judgement concludes with an exhaustive and exacting discussion of universalism and contemporary liberalism; and the judgement view of justice. The key themes of this examination are the good; equal respect; and reflexive judgement. (shrink)

The revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics since the 1980s does not signify that it goes back to its original form; rather, it is generally manifested in three different variations: The first is a variation of what is known as communitarianism, the second is universalism, and the third is phronesis. On the social level of morality, the serious attempt of modern virtue ethics towards improving the moral spirit of society is laudable. However, its method and reasoning deviates greatly from the demands (...) of modern society’s integration of its operating rules and regulations, and concept of values; hence all of its attempts can hardly escape the fate of becoming just a fantasy. Yet, on the level of dealing with ethic conflicts and moral paradox, modern virtue ethics—via interpreting the theory of phronesis by Aristotle—proposes the valuable thought of a balanced morality that principlism should concern itself with and nourish itself from. (shrink)

This essay focuses on political implications of Derrida’s messianicité as a form of Marrano messianism: a universal vision of community “out of joints” which, despite its disjointedness and inner separation, nonetheless addresses itself as “we”. By referring to the generalized “Marrano experience” – the fate of those Sephardic Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity and, in consequence, became neither Jewish nor Christian – Derrida takes the Marrano as his paradigmatic political figure of a “rogue” who escapes every identity (...) politics. In Derrida’s project of “living together”, the Marrano stands for the non-participatory remnant of otherness which is not just the other of this or that particular tradition, but becomes a bearer of a new universalism, based not on the abstract notion of human nature but on the non-identity, a distance-from-identity or what Yirmijahu Yovel calls the “non-integral identity.”. (shrink)

Breaches of research integrity have gained considerable attention due to high-profile scandals involving questionable research practices by reputable scientists. These practices include plagiarism, manipulation of authorship, biased presentation of findings and misleading reports of significance. To combat such practices, policymakers tend to rely on top-down measures, mandatory ethics training and stricter regulation, despite limited evidence of their effectiveness. In this study, we investigate the occurrence and underlying factors of questionable research practices (QRPs) through an original survey of 3,005 social and (...) medical researchers at Swedish universities. By comparing the role of the organizational culture, researchers´ norms and counter norms, and individual motivation, the study reveals that the counter norm of Biasedness—the opposite of universalism and skepticism—is the overall most important factor. Thus, Biasedness was related to 40–60% of the prevalence of the questionable practices. The analysis also reveals the contradictory impact of other elements in the organizational environment. Internal competition was positively associated with QRP prevalence, while group-level ethics discussions consistently displayed a negative association with such practices. Furthermore, in the present study items covering ethics training and policies have only a marginal impact on the prevalence of these practices. The organizational climate and normative environment have a far greater influence. Based on these findings, it is suggested that academic leaders should prioritize the creation and maintenance of an open and unbiased research environment, foster a collaborative and collegial climate, and promote bottom-up ethics discussions within and between research groups. (shrink)

This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the ethnosciences with ontological debates in philosophy. First, we survey empirical evidence from heterogeneous cultural contexts and disciplines. Second, we propose a model of cross‐cultural relations between ontologies beyond a simple divide between universalist and relativist models. Third, we argue for an integrative model of ontology building that synthesizes insights from different fields such as biological taxonomy, cognitive science, cultural anthropology, and political ecology. We conclude by (...) arguing that a program of ethnoontology provides philosophers both with insights about traditional issues such as debates about natural kinds and with novel strategies for connecting philosophy with pressing global issues such as the conservation of local environments and the self‐determination of Indigenous communities. (shrink)

While Roman Catholic feminist ethicists typically endorse moral realism and crosscultural standards of justice, they also have been influenced by the postmodern interrogation of abstract reason and moral universalism. As theologians writing after the Second Vatican Council, they are increasingly sensitive to the communal and ecclesial dimensions of morality and of Christian ethics, and to the integral relation of Christian faith and ethics. This essay will consider two approaches to Catholic feminist ethics that differ in the relative weight they give (...) to constructive work for social justice, or to the grounding of ethics in prayer and mysticism. Using critical feminist reappropriations of the theology and ethics of Aquinas as examples, this essay will argue that the two approaches are overlapping and interdependent. (shrink)

This book proposes an account of the place of the theory of race in Kant’s thought as a central part of philosophical anthropology in his political system. Kant’s theory of race, this book argues, is integral to the analysis of the “Charakteristik” of the human species and determined by human natural predispositions. The understanding of his theory as such suggests not only an alternative reading to the orthodox narrative we have seen so far but also reveals the underlying centrality of (...) the notion of human natural predispositions in a way that is consequential for Kant’s philosophy as a whole. What is the impact of Kant’s racial theory on his philosophy and political thought? Is Kant a consistent egalitarian or a partisan Universalist thinker? Is he the symbol of racist prejudices of his time? What is the influence of his racial hierarchy on his cosmopolitan right? Or more simply, is Kant racist? From a systematic examination of Kant relevant writings, this book provides answers to these questions and shed light on two fundamental problems of his theory of race for moral philosophy, namely: the completeness of the character of the White race and the dispossession of the character of the beauty and the dignity of human nature of the Negro race. These two issues, unperceived from the “orthodox” reading’s perspective, however, uncovered by the “heterodox” reading, not only shape Kant’s race thinking from the beginning to the end of his life, transform his cosmopolitan right into a non-universalist form of right, but merely define Kant as a fundamental racist thinker since he developed the anthropology, the philosophy, and the politics of racism in a systematic way. (shrink)

For centuries, the processes of social differentiation associated with Modernity have often been thought to intensify the need for site-specific forms of role training and knowledge production, threatening the university’s survival either through fragmentation or through failure to adapt. Other lines of argument emphasize the extent to which the Modern system creates and relies on an integrated knowledge system, but most of the literature stresses functional differentiation and putative threats to the university. And yet over this period the university has (...) flourished. In our view, this seeming paradox is explained by the fact that modern society rests as much on universalistic cosmological bases as it does on differentiation. The university expands over recent centuries because – as it has from its religious origins – it casts cultural and human materials in universalistic terms. Our view helps explain empirical phenomena that confound standard accounts: the university’s extraordinary expansion and global diffusion, its curricular and structural isomorphism, and its relatively unified structure. All of this holds increasingly true after World War II, as national state societies made up of citizens are increasingly embedded in a world society constituted of empowered individuals. The redefinition of society in global and individual terms reduces nationally bounded models of nature and culture, extends the pool of university beneficiaries and investigators, and empowers the human persons who are understood to root it all. The changes intensify universalization and the university’s rate of worldwide growth. For the university’s knowledge and “knowers,” and for the pedagogy that joins them together, the implications are many. The emerging societal context intensifies longstanding processes of cultural rationalization and ontological elaboration, yielding great expansions in what can and should be known, and in who can and should know. These changes in turn alter the menu of approved techniques for joining knowledge and knower as one. The “knowledge society” that results is distinguished by the extraordinary degree to which the university is linked to society. But it is also distinguished by the degree to which society is organized around the university’s abstracted and universalized understandings of the world and its degree-certified graduates. (shrink)

Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi regard the human as an emotional being and especially consider such moral feelings as humane love, filial piety and devoted loyalty to be the constituent elements of humanity. On the one hand, they try to integrate the corresponding multiple roles of the humane person, filial son and loyal subject in harmony in order to make one become a true human in the ethical sense; on the other hand, they assign a supreme position merely to filial piety (...) or loyalty in cases of conflict because they regard one's parents or ruler as the greatest root of one's life, respectively. As a result, their ideas about humanity fall into some in-depth moral paradoxes, which might be resolved by a post-Confucian transformation of the traditional Confucian framework from particularistic consanguinism to universalistic humanism. (shrink)

This article raises the issue of the foundation of ethics in the situation of the pluralism of modern and contemporary society. Then , two types of answers to these problems are analyzed: comunitarism as the identitary ethics of an 'ourselves', and contractualism as the ethics of the partners' interests, which present themselves as rival theories in opposition to the universalism of kantian morality. It is however shown , how Kant himself had already worked at different levels of human integration with (...) both models: that of social contract and that of ethical community, and had articulated them in his system. The universal principle of morality , on the other hand, places itself at the meta-level of the profound grammar of the ethos of communities and contracts . Finally, it is observed that Kant´s fundamental ethical texts have not explicitly dealt with the hermeneutical problem of moral judgment in contexts of action. However, some passages of the Grundlegung are analyzed, as well as the Second Part of the Critique of Practical Reason, in which we find precise indications on this issue. It is maintained, that the observed lack of treatment may be bridged by means of widening the scope of the doctrine of reflexive judgment of aesthetic taste of the Third Critique's first part, which appears relevant, not for the foundation of the principle of morality, but for its application, i.e., for moral life.Este artículo plantea el problema de la fundamentación de la ética en la situación del pluralismo de la sociedad moderna y contemporánea. Se analizan luego dos tipos de respuesta a este problema: el comunitarismo como la ética identitaria de un nosotros, y el contractualismo como la ética de los intereses de los socios, los cuales se presentan como teorías rivales frente al universalismo de la moralidad kantiana. Se muestra sin embargo cómo el propio Kant había trabajado ya en distintos planos de la integración humana con los dos modelos del contrato social y de la comunidad ética, y los había articulado en su sistema. El principio universal de la moralidad se ubica en cambio en el meta-nivel de la gramática profunda del ethos de las comunidades y de los contratos . Se observa finalmente que los textos éticos fundamentales de Kant no han tratado de manera explícita el problema hermenéutico del juicio moral en los contextos de acción. Se analizan no obstante algunos pasajes de la Grundlegung y la Segunda Parte de la Crítica de la Razón Práctica, en los que hay indicaciones precisas sobre este problema. Se sostiene que la observada laguna se puede sortear mediante la ampliación de los alcances de la doctrina del juicio reflexivo del gusto estético de la primera parte de la Tercera Crítica, la cual parece relevante, no para la fundación del principio de la moralidad, pero sí para su aplicación, es decir: para la vida moral. (shrink)

The Middle Way is the practical principle of avoiding both positive and negative absolutes, so as to develop provisional beliefs accessible to experience. Although inspired initially by the Buddha’s Middle Way, in Middle Way Philosophy Robert M Ellis has developed it as a critical universalism: a way of separating the helpful from the unhelpful elements of any tradition. In this book, the Middle Way is applied to the Christian tradition in order to argue for a meaningful and positive interpretation of (...) it, without the absolute beliefs that many assume to be essential to Christianity. Faith as an embodied, provisional confidence is distinguished from dogmatic belief. Recent developments in embodied meaning, brain lateralization from neuroscience, Jungian archetypes and the Jungian model of psychological integration are drawn on to support an account of how Christian faith is not only possible without ‘belief’ in God or Christ, but indeed puts us in a better position to access inspiration, moral purpose, responsibility and the basis of peace. (shrink)

This article focuses on the theory of solidarity presented by Émile Durkheim in The Division of Labour in Society ([1893] 1969). Despite its popularity, the distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity has received a lot of criticism. Durkheim allegedly was unable to demonstrate the superior integrating force of modern organic solidarity, while this was his central thesis at the time. A second critique challenges his macrostructural point of view. However, by confronting Durkheim’s classical theory with contemporary work, notably Honneth’s theory (...) of recognition, we can deduce a reformulated framework that is less vulnerable to the afore-mentioned critiques. On the one hand, we specify mechanical and organic solidarity as a dialectical synthesis of both internalized universalistic principles and particularistic emotional orientations. On the other, we incorporate the foregoing typology in a cyclical model that implies interacting processes of inclusion and individualization. (shrink)

Today’s technological-scientific prospect of posthumanity simultaneously evokes and defies historical understanding. On the one hand, it implies a historical claim of an epochal transformation concerning posthumanity as a new era. On the other, by postulating the birth of a novel, better-than-human subject for this new era, it eliminates the human subject of modern Western historical understanding. In this article, I attempt to understand posthumanity as measured against the story of humanity as the story of history itself. I examine the fate (...) of humanity as the central subject of history in three consecutive steps: first, by exploring how classical philosophies of history achieved the integrity of the greatest historical narrative of history itself through the very invention of humanity as its subject; second, by recounting how this central subject came under heavy criticism by postcolonial and gender studies in the last half-century, targeting the universalism of the story of humanity as the greatest historical narrative of history; and third, by conceptualizing the challenge of posthumanity against both the story of humanity and its criticism. Whereas criticism fragmented history but retained the possibility of smaller-scale narratives, posthumanity does not doubt the feasibility of the story of humanity. Instead, it necessarily invokes humanity, if only in order to be able to claim its supersession by a better-than-human subject. In that, it represents a fundamental challenge to the modern Western historical condition and the very possibility of historical narratives – small-scale or large-scale, fragmented or universal. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze the nature of neoliberal multiculturalism put in place by South-American governments following the Indian mobilizations of the 1980’s and the abandon of the model of development based on the corporatist and social state. Following the work of neo-Marxist and post-structuralist currents in anthropology, I seek to account for the new political rationality, which strives to produce functional individualities and to governmentalize civil society through the expansion of the logic of the market in territories that lie (...) at the periphery of globalized capitalism. By examining the links between multiculturalism and neoliberalism, I aim to overcome the opposition between culturalist and anti-culturalist idealisms. I also interrogate the politicization of culture and the production, through Indian struggles, of a new anti capitalistic universalism that integrates the critique of universalism as universalization of particular values. (shrink)

This chapter considers the wider significance of torture, addressing the manner in which it represents a touchstone for any universalistic morality, and arguing that it offers a means of refuting any moral relativism, something that ties in closely with my long-term theoretical work in metaethics (eg Getting What You Want? A Critique of Liberal Morality (Routledge: London and New York, 1998; and ongoing work around the ultimate justification of morality). Since torture consists in the erasure of a person on the (...) basis of their being an embodied rational agent, that is to say, of their being a person, it requires that the torturer at once recognise and negate the personhood of the person being tortured. The contradiction involved is immediate and integral: torture, one might say, is practical self-contradiction par excellence. For it is embodied rational agents who constitute the subject of any form, and thus of any theory, of morality -- and thus of global social and thus to torture a person is to both accept and deny our identity as embodied rational agents. This work also led to the opportunity for further collaboration with one of the editors, Heather Widdows, this time as part of a larger project on which I have been working for some time – both academically and as an activist -- namely to rescue work from the 1970s and 1980s for the Left. I have so far made two academic contributions: Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women – a Reassessment’, in eds H Marway and H Widdows, Women and Violence: the Agency of Victims and Perpetrators. Palgrave Macmillan: London, forthcoming 2013 and ‘The family and neo-liberalism: time to revive a critique’, Ethics and Social Welfare, forthcoming 2012. (shrink)

Following the recent practice turn in privacy research, informational privacy is increasingly analyzed with regard to the “appropriate flow of information” within a given practice, which preserves the “contextual integrity” of that practice (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 149; 2015). Such a practice-theoretical take on privacy emphasizes the normative structure of practices as well as its structural injustices and power asymmetries, rather than focusing on the intentions and moral considerations of individual or institutional actors. Since privacy norms are seen to be institutionalized (...) via the role obligations of the practice's participants, this approach can analyze structural and systematic privacy infringements in terms of “defective role performances and defective social relations” (Roessler & Mokrosinska, 2013, p. 780). -/- Unfortunately, it is still often somewhat unclear what this exactly means within the context of informational privacy, why these performances and relations are defective and for whom. This raises the common objection of a so-called “practice positivism” (Applbaum, 1999, p. 51), that is, the difficulty of practice–theoretical accounts to take a practice-independent standpoint, from which to normatively evaluate the existing practice norms themselves. For example, Nissenbaum herself initially argues for a “presumption in favor of the status quo” with respect to the appropriateness and flow of privacy norms within a practice (Nissenbaum, 2004, p. 127). Such a “practice conservatism” (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 169) comes dangerously close to committing a naturalistic fallacy, if not undergirded by practice-external criteria (which is ultimately what she does). -/- Merely resorting to existing practice norms to assess what defective role performances amount to, only shifts the question from how to recognize an appropriate flow of information to the question of how to recognize those defective role performances and social relations. Against this backdrop, the central aim of this article is to shed light on this question without resorting to practice-independent first principles or far-reaching universalistic anthropological assumptions. For this, I will analyze the notion of “defective role performances and social relations” in terms of social pathologies.1 Doing so has two advantages: First of all, it can draw on already existing concepts and distinctions, which help to categorize the different levels of analysis that exist in informational privacy research and situate the notion of “defective role performances” within them (Section 1). Second, those concepts and distinctions can serve as a basis for establishing a typology of phenomena with regard to deficient practices of informational privacy (Section 4). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity by Steven B. SmithSteven NadlerSteven B. Smith. Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. xvii + 270. Cloth, $30.00.Steven B. Smith’s aim in this elegant, well-written book is to restore Spinoza to his important and rightful place in the history of political and religious thought. At the heart of the book is (...) a discussion of the central themes of the Theological-Political Treatise, with a good deal of attention given both to Spinoza’s other writings and to other political thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, as well as to the immediate historical situation in the mid-seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. But this is more than just a commentary on a work that for a long time has largely (and unjustly) been ignored by philosophers. Smith has a full appreciation of the radical nature of the Treatise, and uses it to bring out what is peculiarly fascinating about Spinoza’s religious and political ideas.According to Smith, it was Spinoza who first made the “Jewish Question”—the problem of how the Jews, after centuries of separation and ghettoization, can be granted admission to, and even assimilation into, the modern polity—central to reflection on the “theological-political problem,” that is, the problem of the place and role of religion in the state. Smith sees Spinoza’s solution to both problems in the process of secularization. Jews must, in order to become an integrated part of modern society, shed their ancient, traditional identity; Judaism has to be transformed from “an authoritative body of revealed law into what today would be called a modern secular identity” (xiii). The allegiance of Jews must be transferred from the Law to laws, from a life of halakhic (or Jewish legal) ritual to a life focussed on nonsectarian, civil and social duties. Particularism—and this would be true of all historical religious identities that will, ideally, be absorbed into the modern state—must be exchanged for universalism.Smith shows how Spinoza’s thinking on the Jewish question is intimately bound up with his particular political philosophy. He argues, in fact, that the Treatise represents the “first and most profound expression of the Jewish-liberal symbiosis that has survived to the present.” For the kind of polity that will make Jewish emancipation possible and foster the emergence of a modern, secular, nonparticularistic Jewish identity is the democratic, liberal state. But if liberalism, through its offer of toleration and participation, nourishes modern Judaism, it is no less true, Smith claims, that it has taken its own sustenance from Jewish traditions. Rabbinic Judaism, with its emphasis on law, has long served as a model for classical liberal thought.Spinoza himself is, in Smith’s eyes (although Smith is certainly not the first to suggest this) the “prototype” of the modern emancipated Jew, liberated from (and even critical of) religious tradition and authority. He is, in other words, the first “secular Jew.” Amsterdam, meanwhile, with its linked traditions of toleration and commerce, is the prototype of the modern, liberal society, one that both offers the conditions for Jewish emancipation and is ever vigilant against interference from ambitious religious authorities. Smith does not really take note of the fact that Dutch society in the Golden Age, with its rigid system of regent families controlling the all-important municipal governments, was far from democratic. And it seems to me misleading to speak of Spinoza as a “secular Jew.” Spinoza seems to have liberated himself—with a [End Page 321] little help from his congregation’s rabbis—not only from an orthodox conformity to Jewish traditions, but from any sense of Jewish identity whatsoever. Perhaps it might be more accurate to call Spinoza the “first secular citizen.”One of the more contentious claims of Smith’s book is his insistence that Spinoza’s Treatise contains an esoteric dimension, an intentionally hidden doctrine that only the most careful readers could ascertain. Part of the defense of this Straussian model is the identification of “deliberate contradictions” in the text. I, for one, do not see any esoteric doctrines in the Treatise; nor... (shrink)

This article explores Mencius’ extension of moral feelings and its potential to address a key challenge in cosmopolitan education: how to motivate students to expand their existing affection and obligations towards their family and community to the rest of the world. Rather than strong universalism, a Mencian orientation is aligned with rooted cosmopolitanism that takes into account localised and cultural contexts that underpin, determine and give value to social practices. Mencius’ approach, as argued in this essay, highlights the spontaneous human (...) reactions to ethical situations, innate human goodness, analogical reasoning, moral character and agency. A Confucian form of cosmopolitan education gives emphasis not only to the students’ moral imagination but also their instinctual responses, self-reflection and rationality. Such an education seeks to integrate emotions and reasoning through the utilisation of paradigm scenarios that identify and reinforce the natural compassionate feelings in the learner. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In an attempt to formulate an African phenomenological method, this article engages with existing African philosophical schools, namely particularism, universalism and eclecticism. I will explore how the positions advanced in these schools, valid in their own rights, are at the same time potentially absolutist and thus in need of reformulation. I will also test my theoretical findings by addressing the ontological implications of ontological absolutism in politics, with special reference to the situation in Cameroon and how they translate to (...) an identity crisis. I argue that an absolutist understanding of human existence has become an integral justification for the use of violence. I then proceed to propose ways of addressing the situation by arguing that this absolutist foundation is foreign to Africa in general and Cameroon in particular, and it will only further the chaos that is already ravishing the social reality in Cameroon. While addressing the problem, the aim here is to attempt a formulation of an African phenomenological approach and to bring attention to the often-neglected phenomenological and ontological dimensions in African politics. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans inspire us to consider ourselves as citizens of the world and to take this allegiance to the world community as relevant in our moral deliberations. Cosmopolitanism is a western notion that epitomizes the need social agents have to conceive of a political and cultural entity, larger than their own homeland, that would encompass all human beings on a global scale. Cosmopolitanism presupposes a positive attitude towards difference, a desire to construct broad allegiances and equal and peaceful global communities of (...) citizens who should be able to communicate across cultural and social boundaries forming a Universalist solidarity. Its inclusive drive is most evident in moments of crisis of other modes of representing and ascribing membership to existing socio-political and cultural units. Cosmopolitanism slowly began to come to the fore again with the renewed study of more ancient texts, but during the humanist era cosmopolitanism still remained the exception. Despite the fact that ancient cosmopolitan sources were well-known and that many humanists emphasised the essential unity of all religions, they did not develop this idea in cosmopolitan terms. In most versions of cosmopolitanism, the universal community of world citizens functions as a positive ideal to be cultivated, but a few versions exist in which it serves primarily as a ground for denying the existence of special obligations to local forms of political organisations. Versions of cosmopolitanism also vary depending on the notion of citizenship they employ, including whether they use the notion of 'world citizenship' literally or metaphorically. The philosophical interest in cosmopolitanism lies in its challenge to commonly recognised attachments to fellow citizens, the local state, parochially shared cultures, and the like. Cosmopolitanism: Uses of the Idea compiles both historical and contemporary methodologies to cosmopolitanism, in addition to recognising its multidimensional nature to show the essence of cosmopolitanism as a theoretical idea and cultural practice. Since its inception, cosmopolitanism has been a category marked by a need to negotiate with others and has reflected tensions between local and supralocal realities, ethnocentric and relativist perspectives, and particularism and universalism. Historically, cosmopolitanism has mirrored the ideologies of different periods and modes of integration to larger, imperial or global, political entities. The Internet has brought about the possibility of a transnational imagined virtual community: a decentred cosmopolitan crowd, synchronized by cyberspace, interacting on real-time, and engaging in global commercial, cultural and political exchange. A number of works provide general overviews of cosmopolitanism, including its practices, theorising, and interpretations of issues in contemporary political and social theory. The monograph examines the idea of cosmopolitanism -- what it is and what it entails and its role in addressing global issues. (shrink)