We report core stratigraphy and chronology that explains the diachronic history of the surface in a prehispanic wetland agricultural complex of planting platforms and canals at Mandinga, central Veracruz, Mexico. Using recognizable stratigraphic horizons, elevations of prehistoric surfaces were measured for the wetland prior to the construction of platforms and canals, immediately following construction, at the time of abandonment, and of the present-day surface. Significant topographic and hydrological changes are evident. We discuss our results in the light of (...) prehispanic water management and cultivation and postulate water storage within the wetland, a patchy management of water and cultivation, and variable productivity. The paper ends with a discussion of the lessons that can be learned when contemplating contemporary cultivation of wetlands. In addition to the environmental concerns, we emphasize the need to consider the physical, socio-economic, and political contexts in which contemporary wetland agriculture would have to operate. (shrink)

The tropical lowlands of southern Mexico and Central America are composed of a complex mosaic of landscapes that presented a variety of possibilities and challenges to the subsistence practices of the ancient Maya. The Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project has been investigating ancient Maya agricultural practices and use of resources in a unique fresh-water wetland zone located in the northeast corner of the Yucatán Peninsula. While containing only a sparse population today, the Yalahau region once supported numerous Maya communities (...) and civic-ceremonial centers, particularly during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods, between approximately 100 B.C. and A.D. 450. Our investigations have developed evidence that the ancient Maya manipulated and cultivated the wetland landscape of the region, used soil or algae from the wetlands to enrich upland garden plots, and cultivated trees within their communities. We suggest that the study of ancient Maya agricultural practices can contribute to sustainable development of the area today and in the future. (shrink)

Mountains were once no less feared and loathed than wetlands. Mountains, however, were aesthetically rehabilitated (in part by modern landscape painting), but wetlands remain aesthetically reviled. The three giants of American environmental philosophy--Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold--all expressed aesthetic appreciation of wetlands. For Thoreau and Muir--both of whom were a bit misanthropic and contrarian--the beauty of wetlands was largely a matter of their floral interest and wildness (freedom from human inhabitation and economic exploitation). Leopold's aesthetic appreciation of wetlands was better informed (...) by evolutionary natural history and ecology. For example, cranes--wetland denizens--are more ancient than other large American avifauna and this evolutionary information and perspective enhances our aesthetic experience of them; and the ecological relationships between wetland species--such as sphagnum moss, tamaracks, and pitcher plants--informs our aesthetic experience of the wetlands biotic community. The Leopold land aesthetic involves all sensory modalities, emphasizes cognition as well as sensation (in this regard it may fruitfully be compared to the philosophy of Kant), and is more akin to an aesthetic of muisic than to an aesthetic of painting. (shrink)

Much has been written about the chinampas of central Mexico. One of the commonly repeated themes is that these wetland fields were self-irrigated from below in a process known as sub-irrigation. According to this model, water infiltrates the planting platforms from adjacent canals and then rises to the root zone by capillary action. Thus, chinampas are thought to have needed little supplemental irrigation, and produced dependable and high yields. Here I report the results of field and lab studies of (...) soils of 10 chinampas in the region east of Xochimilco, in the Mexican Federal District. These interpretations are combined with discussion of maize rooting tendencies, regional rainfall patterns, and the presence of willow tree roots in chinampa soils. I also consider whether farmers strive to create and maintain optimum field morphologies for subirrigation when faced with both flood and drought risk, and when manual irrigation is aready option. I conclude that while sub-irrigation is possible under certain combinations of field morphology, crop type, and soil properties, it was a relatively minor factor in the overall decision-making process of past chinampa farmers, and should not be a major determinant of future planning for chinampa preservation or reconstruction. Furthermore, sub-irrigation must be modeled carefully in relation to soil properties, croptypes, and seasonality if it is to beconsidered a significant function of wetland fields in any context. (shrink)

Prolonged investigations of past and present use of wetland margins in various lowlands within Latin America have yielded a wealth of detail. It has become necessary to search out regularities in the natural environmental context and the human adaptations, all of which can be done advantageously in the context of the concept of landscape. Such a move in the direction of theory is attempted here by means of a heuristic model and an exploration of variations in its expression. The (...) discussion of seasonal as well as longer termed change in the natural environment and human adaptation is easily accomodated. The essay includes a brief consideration of some of the recent directions in the investigation of the tropical wetland landscape. (shrink)

This paper addresses some of the contours of an ethics of knowledge in the context of ameliorative epistemology, where this term describes epistemological projects aimed at redressing epistemic injustices, improving collective epistemic practices, and educating more effectively for higher-order reflective reasoning dispositions. Virtue theory and embodiment theory together help to tie the cultivation of moral and epistemic emotions to cooperative problem-solving. We examine one cooperative vice, ‘knavery,’ and how David Hume’s little-noticed discussion of it is a forerunner of contemporary (...) game theory’s concern with behavior of ‘free riding’ on systems of trust or cooperation. We develop these and other examples as calling for “risk-aware” social epistemology, which ties epistemic risk with doxastic responsibility. Risk-aware social epistemology aims at describing and ameliorating epistemic practices, but without confusing over-generalizing about culpability in ways that would conflate philosophical censure or critique of bias, with “blameworthiness” in any stronger sense. (shrink)

Is disgust morally valuable? The answer to that question turns, in large part, on what we can do to shape disgust for the better. But this cultivation question has received surprisingly little attention in philosophical debates. To address this deficiency, this article examines empirical work on disgust and emotion regulation. This research reveals that while we can exert some control over how we experience disgust, there’s little we can do to substantively change it at a more fundamental level. These (...) empirical insights have revisionary implications both for debates about disgust’s moral value and for our understanding of agency and moral development more generally. (shrink)

In the past few years, the ethical ramifications of AI technologies have been at the center of intense debates. Considerable attention has been devoted to understanding how a morally responsible practice of data science can be promoted and which values have to shape it. In this context, ethics and moral responsibility have been mainly conceptualized as compliance to widely shared principles. However, several scholars have highlighted the limitations of such a principled approach. Drawing from microethics and the virtue theory tradition, (...) in this paper, we formulate a different approach to ethics in data science which is based on a different conception of “being ethical” and, ultimately, of what it means to promote a morally responsible data science. First, we develop the idea that, rather than only compliance, ethical decision-making consists in using certain moral abilities, which are cultivated by practicing and exercising them in the data science process. An aspect of virtue development that we discuss here is moral attention, which is the ability of data scientists to identify the ethical relevance of their own technical decisions in data science activities. Next, by elaborating on the capability approach, we define a technical act as ethically relevant when it impacts one or more of the basic human capabilities of data subjects. Therefore, rather than “applying ethics”, data scientists should cultivate ethics as a form of reflection on how technical choices and ethical impacts shape one another. Finally, we show how this microethical framework concretely works, by dissecting the ethical dimension of the technical procedures involved in data understanding and preparation of electronic health records. (shrink)

In Cultivating Citizens Dwight Allman and Michael Beaty bring together some of America's leading social and political thinkers to address the question of civic vitality in contemporary American society. The resulting volume is a serious reflection on the history of civil society and a rich and rewarding conversation about the future American civic order.

Offered here is an interpretation of the ancient Confucian philosopher Mengzi's (372–289 B.C.E.) method of cultivating moral feelings, which he calls "extension." It is argued that this method is both psychologically plausible and an important, but often overlooked, part of moral life. In this interpretation, extending our moral feelings is not a project in logical consistency, analogical reasoning, or emotional intuition. Rather, Mengzi's method of extension is a project in realigning the human heart that harnesses our rational, reflective, and emotional (...) capacities in order to extend the feelings we already have to the appropriate objects for these feelings. It is argued that there are three main features of Mengzi's account that make it an attractive explanation of the cultivation of moral feelings. The first is the way Mengzi sees reasoning and philosophical reflection as an aid to, rather than the foundation for, moral development. The second is Mengzi's precision regarding the relationship between the basic moral feelings we start with (the "sprouts") and their corresponding virtues. The method of extension acts as a well-designed bridge between feelings and virtues. Third, Mengzi's account, unlike that of the Mohist Yi Zhi, whom he criticizes, pays special attention to the complexities and limitations of human psychology. In conclusion it is shown how a Mengzian understanding of the relationship between feelings and morality can answer some traditional challenges, especially Kantian ones, regarding the proper role of emotion in moral life. (shrink)

The Analects is a series of glimpses into how Confucius and his students engaged in their projects of moral self-cultivation. This chapter seeks to describe the way in which the outlines of a moral psychology arises from the text and how the text poses issues that came to be central to the Chinese philosophical tradition. It will be argued that the text provides exemplars of moral self-cultivation, that it makes emotion central to virtue and therefore makes emotional self- (...) class='Hi'>cultivation a central focus of moral development, that it highlights the relational nature of moral cultivation as a process that is conducted with others, that it raises difficult and crucial issues about the relation between intuitive and affective styles of action on the one hand and on the other hand action based on deliberation and reflection, and that it has some useful approaches to the problem of situationism that has recently been raised for virtue ethics. (shrink)

Though virtue ethics is enjoying a resurgence, the topic of virtue cultivation has been largely neglected by philosophers. This volume remedies this gap, featuring mostly new essays, commissioned for this collection, by philosophers, theologians, and psychologists at the forefront of research into virtue. Each contribution focuses on some aspect of virtue development, either by highlighting virtue cultivation within distinctive traditions of ethical or religious thought, or by taking a developmental perspective to yield fresh insights into criticisms of virtue (...) ethics, or by examining the science that explains virtue development. The essays by Russell and Driver investigate virtue cultivation or problems associated with it from Aristotelian and utilitarian perspectives. Slote addresses virtue development from the sentimentalist standpoint. Swanton and Cureton and Hill explore self-improvement, the former with an eye to offering solutions to critiques of virtue ethics, the latter from a Kantian ethical vantage point. Slingerland examines contemporary psychology as well as virtue development in the Confucian tradition to counter situationist criticisms of virtue ethics. Flanagan, Bucar, and Herdt examine how virtue is cultivated in the Buddhist, Islamic, and Christian traditions, respectively. Narvaez, Thompson, and McAdams offer descriptive insights from psychology into virtue development. The result is a collection of extremely creative essays that not only fills the current gap but also promises to stimulate new work on a philosophically neglected yet vital topic. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is considered a rare perceptual capacity, and one that is not capable of cultivation. However, meditators report the experience quite commonly, and in questionnaire surveys, respondents claimed to experience synaesthesia in 35% of meditation retreatants, in 63% of a group of regular meditators, and in 86% of advanced teachers. These rates were significantly higher than in nonmeditator controls, and displayed significant correlations with measures of amount of meditation experience. A review of ancient texts found reports suggestive of synaesthesia (...) in advanced meditators from India and China. These findings suggest that synaesthesia may be cultivated by meditation, and that laboratory studies of meditators could be rewarding. (shrink)

This article explores the loss of the Louisiana wetlands from an eco-psychology viewpoint. The causes of the deterioration of Louisiana's coastal wetlands include direct ones such as the building of canals, pipelines, and levee systems, and more importantly, humanity's disconnection from the voices of nature and the wilderness. This article takes the reader to the dying edge of a continent, and invites the reader to adopt a new vision of our place within the world.

In his later moral writings Kant claims that we have a duty to cultivate certain aspects of our sensuous nature. This claim is surprising for three reasons. First, given Kant’s ‘incorporation thesis’ − which states that the only sensible states capable of determining our actions are those that we willingly introduce and integrate into our maxims − it would seem that the content of our inclinations is morally irrelevant. Second, the exclusivity between the passivity that is characteristic of sensibility and (...) the spontaneous quality of our free will that operates throughout Kant’s philosophy seems to preclude that any such cultivation is possible. Third, Kant’s specific arguments concerning why we are obliged to cultivate our sensible nature are unclear. The goal of this paper is to address each of these three concerns and thus fully explain Kant’s theory of the moral necessity of cultivation. (shrink)

Phenomenally strong artworks have the potential to anchor us in reality and to cultivate our perception. For the most part, we barely notice the world around us, as we are too often elsewhere, texting, coordinating schedules, planning ahead, navigating what needs to be done. This is the level of our age that shapes the ways we encounter things and others. In such a world it is no wonder we no longer trust our senses. But as feminists have long argued, thinking (...) grounded in embodied experience can be more open to difference; such embodied thinking helps us to resist the colonization of a singular, only seemingly neutral, perspective that closes down living potentialities. (shrink)

Virtue ethics enjoys a resurgence, yet the topic of virtue cultivation has been largely neglected. This volume remedies this gap, featuring mostly new essays, commissioned for this collection, by philosophers, theologians, and psychologists at the forefront of research into virtue.

In Cultivating Citizens Dwight Allman and Michael Beaty bring together some of America's leading social and political thinkers to address the question of civic vitality in contemporary American society. The resulting volume is a serious reflection on the history of civil society and a rich and rewarding conversation about the future American civic order.

Cultivated by Hand aligns the overlooked history of amateur musicians in the early years of the United States with little-understood practices of music book making. It reveals the pervasiveness of these practices, particularly among women, and their importance for the construction of gender, class, race, and nation.

Cultivation research suggests that media use, particularly TV, is associated with a wide range of politically relevant views and attitudes, including perceptions of the world as a mean and dangerous place, authoritarianism, and perceived meritocracy. However, little attempt has been made to understand how these effects relate to one another and to broader models of political psychology. We present a new Cultivation–Political Psychology Interface Model, which uses Duckitt’s Dual Process Model of political psychology as a lens to understand (...) cultivation research. Many seemingly distinct cultivation effects related to political attitudes can thus be reduced to two overall dimensions: dangerous and competitive worldviews. We identify evidence gaps, particularly in terms of competitive-worldview effects and related political attitudes. Our model generates a landscape of attitudes and beliefs, whereby some attitudes are hypothesized to be more upstream than others, leading to testable hypotheses for future research. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy for those who have been hard hit worldwide. At the same time, it is also a test of concepts and practices of what good care is and requires, and how quality of care can be accounted for. In this paper, we present our Care-Ethical Model of Quality Enquiry and apply it to the case of residential care for older people in the Netherlands during the Covid-19 pandemic. Instead of thinking about care in healthcare and (...) social welfare as a set of separate care acts, we think about care as a complex practice of relational caring, crossed by other practices. Instead of thinking about professional caregivers as functionaries obeying external rules, we think about them as practically wise professionals. Instead of thinking about developing external quality criteria and systems, we think about cultivating reflective quality awareness. Instead of abstracting from societal forces that make care possible but also limit it, we acknowledge them and find ways to deal with them. Based on these critical insights, the CEMQUE model can be helpful to describe, interrogate, evaluate, and improve existing care practices. It has four entries: the care receiver considered from their humanness, the caregiver considered from their solicitude, the care facility considered from its habitability and the societal, institutional and scholarly context considered from the perspective of the good life, justice and decency. The crux is enabling all these different entries with all their different aspects to be taken into account. In Corona times this turns out to be more crucial than ever. (shrink)

What is the role of colleges and universities in forming the character of students? Should universities even attempt to cultivate virtue? If so, how can they do so effectively in a pluralistic context? Cultivating Virtue in the University seeks to answer these questions by gathering diverse perspectives on character education within twenty-first century universities. Bringing together experts from a variety of academic disciplines, this volume catalyzes a critical debate about the possibilities and limits of character education in the university while (...) offering theoretical and practical perspectives on what such education could look like in increasingly global, pluralistic, and intercultural institutions. Ultimately, by engaging insights from education, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology, the volume encourages faculty, staff, and administrators to embrace the opportunities and challenges of cultivating virtue in the university. (shrink)

Our aesthetic practices, by which we aim for better well-being, are intertwined with fostering sustainability. This article focuses on Yuriko Saito’s aesthetics of sustainability, an idea denoting a new kind of aesthetic sensibility informed by and featuring both environmental and cultural sustainability. Saito’s idea is based on our aesthetic relationship with everyday experiences. In this article, I defend the idea, on the one hand, by considering the immanence of change as a sense of contemporary everydayness and, on the other hand, (...) by regarding mindfulness as a practice. Situating the discussion in the European context emphasises the aesthetics of sustainability as a sustainability transformation, that is, an ongoing societal change powered by the continuous cultivation of aesthetic sensibility. (shrink)

Harold Osborne; The Cultivation of Sensibility in Art Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 31–40, https://doi.o.

Harold Osborne; The Cultivation of Sensibility in Art Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 31–40, https://doi.o.

For most people the city, particularly the industrial city, is the antithesis of the aesthetic. While there may be sections that have their charm, trucks and automobiles have conquered the urban streets and pedestrians scurry before them like vanquished before a victor. Gardens and parks are occasional oases amidst the stone desert of concrete and asphalt, but the dominating features of urban experience remain mechanical and electronic noise, trash, monolithic skyscrapers, and moving vehicles. The personal and intimate are swallowed up (...) in mass structure and mass culture. And the human place—precarious and threatened. (shrink)

本文旨在探究王阳明之“真己”修养观，以相关同等理念“心之本体”以 及《传习录》中的“原只是个天理”为出发点,进而思考王阳明哲学中提出的“本体” “躯壳”“嘘吸”“同体”“形体”“灵明”等术语，以及更为久远的概括性词语，如“体” “躯”和“大体”。此外,通过“性”与“气”、“理”与“气”等关联词,王阳明的哲学箴 言“知行合一”、“气”不可分(即“一气流通”)以及“原无非礼”的观点(与其著名的 “良知”一词有关),阐述了他对于“已”的理解。文章还探究了王阳明为何会如此 关注“己”这一古词,以及他所提出的“真己”一词与旧词相比有着哪些重要变化。 最后,文章思考了当今全球共同体的背景下,我们应该如何利用王阳明思想建立 包容又开放的自我认知。王阳明提出的有关人的观点,例如“一嘘吸”和“体网络”——“活力系统”以及“身”——“具象人格”，均根植于“真己”这一概念。这些 思想必须自我修养而成,这也适用于满足当前全球时代精神的迫切需要。[The topic of this investigation centers around the idea of the cultivation of the 'true self' (zhen ji 真己) according to Wang Yangming. Starting from the related idea of an equiprimordiality of 'xin zhi benti 心之本体' and the 'source' (原) of tian li 天理 in Chuanxilu《传习录》, the examination proceeds to reflect on terms like 'benti 本体', 'quqiao 躯壳', 'xu-xi 嘘吸', 'tongti 同体', 'xingti 形体', 'lingming 灵明', etc . in the philosophy (...) of Wang Yangming as well as more ancient and more general terms like 'ti 体', 'qu 躯', and 'dati 大体'. Furthermore, Yangming's understanding of 'ji 己' is expounded in view of correlative pairs of terms like 'xing 性' and 'qi 气' or 'li 理' and 'qi 气', his philosophical maxim of 'zhi-xing he yi 知行合一' and his conviction of the indivisibility of qi 气 (in the sense of 'yiqiliutong 一气流通') as well as the view that 'the origin (is) never without appropriateness' (yuan wu fei li 原无非礼), which relates to his famous use of the expression 'liang zhi 良知'. After that, I am following the question why Wang Yangming has focused on the ancient term 'ji 己' at all and in what sense his new term 'true self' (zhen ji 真己) represents an important transformation in regard to older meanings. In the end, I am pursuing the question, how we can make use of Wang Yangming's understanding to develop an overarching and open self-identity in planetary communality today: Yangming's ideas of mankind as 'one inhaling-exhaling' (yi xu-xi一嘘吸) and as one network of social ti体-'systems of vitality' and individual shen 身-'embodied personalities', which are rooted in the 'true self' (zhen ji 真己) and which are obliged to cultivate themselves, applies to the dire necessities of our present global Zeitgeist.]. (shrink)

"[This book is] focused on the place of character and virtue in professional practice. Professional practices usually have codes of conduct designed to ensure good conduct; but while such codes may be necessary and useful, they appear far from sufficient, since many recent public scandals in professional life seem to have been attributable to failures of personal moral character. This book argues that there is a pressing need to devote more attention in professional education to the cultivation or development (...) of such moral qualities as integrity, courage, self-control, service and selflessness... [This] volume looks beyond traditional professions to explore the ethical dimensions of a broad range of important professional practices. Inspired by a successful international and interdisciplinary conference on the topic, the book examines various ways of promoting moral character and virtue in professional life from the general ethical perspective of contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue theory."--. (shrink)

Various themes have been discussed under the heading of ‘situationism’ in psychology over the past forty years. Much of this discussion has been extremely controversial, leading to deep divisions among psychologists and, more recently, among philosophers as well. In this paper I will pick up on one of those themes having to do with the influence of certain unconscious mental dispositions. I will assume that these dispositions are widely possessed, and also that they disqualify the people who have them from (...) counting as virtuous at that moment. The majority of the paper will then consider various strategies for trying to still develop the virtues in the face of this particular obstacle. (shrink)

This thesis offers an original theory of how we can cultivate our passionate attachments based on the Francophone interpretation of the Hellenistic conception of self-cultivation. Recently Harry Frankfurt, Bernard Williams, and Susan Wolf have argued that practical philosophers must direct more attention to how our passionate attachments radically affect our resolution to the question of ‘how one should live’. By neglecting this topic, these thinkers argue, we overlook some of the strongest and most distinctively human motivations that guide our (...) practical lives, ones that have a powerful effect on our capacity to flourish. Not only should philosophers explain how our moral obligations and prudential concerns guide our conduct, they should also explain how and why we are guided by deep-seated passionate attachments, considerations that Frankfurt, Williams, and Wolf argue provide the conditions for leading a life with a sense of meaning and purpose. Despite viewing passionate attachments as being vitally important, Frankfurt, Williams, and Wolf offer separate accounts of either why we cannot actively cultivate them, or why we cannot form a philosophical theory of doing so. If there is a way in which we can cultivate our passionate attachments, then these thinkers argue that we must look outside philosophy: to the contingency of personal preference, to self-help instruction manuals, to guidance from religious traditions, or in extremis to clinical psychology. My study aims to show that this attitude is overly pessimistic. Not only do we have reason to view passionate attachments as susceptible to growth, change, and improvement, but we should view these entities as amenable to self-cultivation. Only by understanding this process can we construct a theory of cultivating our passionate attachments. Focusing on Pierre Hadot’s and Michel Foucault’s respective accounts of Hellenistic self-cultivation, provides vital conceptual tools to formulate a theory of cultivating our passionate attachments. First, their accounts of Hellenistic self-cultivation offer the conceptual resources for a philosophical theory of how we can cultivate our passionate attachments. Second, the exercises of self-cultivation they focus on allow us to outline a practical method though which we can cultivate our passionate character. This takes the exercises of self-cultivation beyond their historical use, as well as beyond their role in the respective projects of these Francophone thinkers. Doing this brings out a significantly new dimension to the role of the passionate attachments in the flourishing life: not only are they valuable in the way Frankfurt, Williams, and Wolf suggest, but we can offer theoretical and practical accounts how we can cultivate them based on the Hellenistic conception of self-directed character change. (shrink)

Commentators disagree about Kant’s view on the proper treatment of emotions. In contrast to a tendency in this literature to treat them uniformly, I argue that, according to Kant, feelings (but not affects) require cultivation, and inclinations – although they can and perhaps may be cultivated – generally require discipline. The appropriate treatment for emotions depends on their susceptibility to rational constraint and on the threat they pose to rational deliberation. Although I read Kant as recommending that we cultivate (...) certain emotions, I argue that my reading is not vulnerable to Thomason’s recent pertinent objections to such readings. (shrink)

To assess whether and how environmental values and sense of place relate to sustainable farming practices, we conducted a study in South Kona, Hawaii, addressing environmental values, sense of place, and farm sustainability in five categories: environmental health, community engagement and food security, culture and history, education and research, and economics. We found that the sense of place and environmental values indexes showed significant correlation to each category of sustainability in both independent linear regressions and multivariate regression. In total, sense (...) of place explained a larger share of the overall farm performance. However, each indicator showed relative strengths; environmental values showed significantly higher correlation to environmental and educational practices. Furthermore the scales were complimentary, and the use of both scales greatly improved prediction of good farming practices from a multiple-impact perspective. With implications for community and environmental impacts, results suggest that a more comprehensive view of farmers’ environmental values and place connections may help illuminate individual farmers’ decisions and sustainability-related practices. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the role that the intellectual virtue of curiosity can play in response to some of the most pressing challenges of the Information Age. I argue that virtuous curiosity represents a valuable characterological resource for the twenty-first century, in particular, a restricted form of curiosity, namely inquisitiveness. I argue that virtuous inquisitiveness should be trained and cultivated, via the skill of good questioning, and discuss the risks of failing to do so in relation to the design (...) and use of novel technologies. If left unchecked, I argue, vicious forms of curiosity can emerge, with broad implications for society as a whole. Thus, we should seek to cultivate virtuous curiosity and teach the skill of good questioning to those of us (in principle, all of us) who use and rely on technology in our work and lives. (shrink)

Our aesthetic practices, by which we aim for better well-being, are intertwined with fostering sustainability. This article focuses on Yuriko Saito’s aesthetics of sustainability, an idea denoting a new kind of aesthetic sensibility informed by and featuring both environmental and cultural sustainability. Saito’s idea is based on our aesthetic relationship with everyday experiences. In this article, I defend the idea, on the one hand, by considering the immanence of change as a sense of contemporary everydayness and, on the other hand, (...) by regarding mindfulness as a practice. Situating the discussion in the European context emphasises the aesthetics of sustainability as a sustainability transformation, that is, an ongoing societal change powered by the continuous cultivation of aesthetic sensibility. (shrink)

Both Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophers provide accounts of the life lived well: a Confucian junzi, a Daoist sage and a Greek phronimos. Cultivation in Early China and Ancient Greece engages in comparative, cross-tradition scholarship and investigates the processes associated with cultivating or nurturing the self in order to live such lives. -/- By focusing on the processes rather than the aims of cultivating a good life, an international team of scholars investigate how a person develops and practices a (...) way of life. They look at what is involved in developing practical wisdom, exercising reason, cultivating equanimity and fostering reliability. Using the thought of those thinkers central to both traditions, including Plato, Confucius, Han Fei and Marcus Aurelius, they examine themes of harmony, balance and beauty, and highlight the different concerns of scepticism across both traditions. They also discuss the action of doing as an indispensable method of learning. As a result, Cultivation in Early China and Ancient Greece is a valuable collection opening up new lines of inquiry in ethics and demonstrating the importance of drawing on philosophical ideas from across cultural traditions. (shrink)

The beliefs both that sentimental education is a vital part of moral education and that habituation is a vital part of sentimental education can be counted as being at the ‘hard core’ of the Aristotelian tradition of moral thought and action. On the basis of an explanation of the defining characteristics of Aristotelian habituation, this paper explores how and why habituation may be an effective way of cultivating the sentimental dispositions that are constitutive of the moral virtues. Taking Aristotle’s explicit (...) remarks on ethismos as a starting point, we present habituation as essentially involving (i) acting as virtue requires, (ii) both frequently and consistently, and (iii) under the supervision of a virtuous tutor. If the focus is on the first two characteristics, habituation seems to be a proper method for acquiring skills or inculcating habits, rather than an effective way of cultivating virtuous sentimental dispositions. It will be argued, however, that even if only the first two characteristics are taken into account, habituation may be an efficacious means of moderating, reducing or restricting the child’s affective dispositions where these are somehow excessive. But contrary to Aristotle’s view, the effectiveness of processes of habituation that are directed at strengthening, deepening or broadening the child’s sentimental dispositions where these are somehow deficient seems to be a function of the third characteristic, especially of the affective responses of the virtuous tutor to the child’s behaviour. At the end of the paper, this predominantly non-cognitive account of the workings of Aristotelian habituation will be compared with Nancy Sherman’s primarily cognitive view. (shrink)

The cultivation of intellectual character is an important goal within university education. This article focusses on cultivating intellectual humility. It first explores an account of intellectual humility from recent literature on the intellectual virtues. Then, it considers one recent pedagogical approach – Making Thinking Visible – as a means of teaching intellectual virtue. It assesses one particular technique for cultivating intellectual humility arising from this pedagogical literature, and applies it to the teaching of political philosophy. Finally, there is a (...) discussion concerning how to supplement these techniques to best teach political philosophy generally, and for the purposes of cultivating intellectual humility in particular. It is argued that, by introducing the technique of the Circle of Viewpoints, supplemented by techniques from the Compassion in Education literature, the modules I teach can better cultivate intellectual humility in my students. (shrink)

What are the ethical, political and cultural consequences of forgetting how to trust our senses? How can artworks help us see, sense, think, and interact in ways that are outside of the systems of convention and order that frame so much of our lives? In Cultivating Perception through Artworks, Helen Fielding challenges us to think alongside and according to artworks, cultivating a perception of what is really there and being expressed by them. Drawing from and expanding on the work of (...) philosophers such as Luce Irigaray and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Fielding urges us to trust our senses and engage relationally with works of art in the here and now rather than distancing and systematizing them as aesthetic objects. Cultivating Perception through Artworks examines examples as diverse as a Rembrandt painting, M. NourbeSe Philip's poetry, and Louise Bourgeois' public sculpture, to demonstrate how artworks enact ethics, politics, or culture. By engaging with different art forms and discovering the unique way that each opens us to the world in a new and unexpected ways, Fielding reveals the importance of our moral, political, and cultural lives. (shrink)

After examining the ethical and political writings of Immanuel Kant, one finds an apparent paradox in his philosophy as his perfectionist moral teachings appear to be linked to his anti-perfectionist political theory. Specifically, he writes that the perfection of moral character can only take place for an individual who is inside of civil society, a condition where no laws may legitimately be implemented expressly for the purpose of trying to make individuals moral. Kant believes that living in civil society is (...) a necessary condition for an individual to refine his talents and reason completely, a process required by morality. I believe, however, that the connection between his moral and political theory runs much deeper than simply facilitating the refinement of talents. Kant's moral theory focuses on an individual's cultivation of virtue, but this cultivation cannot be most satisfactorily completed unless that individual is a member of civil society. Put differently, civil society plays a necessary role in cultivating an individual's character so that he is able to act from maxims consistent with the moral law, out of the respect for the law itself. However, because he believes that civic laws primarily intended to encourage moral cultivation cannot be implemented legitimately, it seems curious that this condition should play such a significant role in Kant's moral philosophy. Through this examination of Kant's moral and political theory, it will be shown that Kant's political society establishes a condition necessary for an individual's complete cultivation of virtue, not by implementing laws that make men moral but by weakening the forces of heteronomy, thereby removing barriers to moral action. (shrink)

How can students’ character formation be supported such that their youthful energy can become a force for the good? There is burgeoning research on how universities can help form people of character (Brooks et al. in _International_ _Journal of Ethics Education_ 4(2):167–182, 2019 ; Lamb et al. in _Journal of Moral Education_ 1–23, 2021b ). Nongovernmental organizations can also play a role. This article explores how a leadership program for students in the Philippines cultivates character using as theoretical framework the (...) 7 strategies of character development presented in Lamb et al. in _Journal of Character Education_ 17(1):81–108, 2021a. Upon examination of how the strategies are integrated, recommendations for improvement of the program design are given. (shrink)

It is often observed that there is little or no moral philosophy in classical Indian Buddhist thought. This is sometimes believed to be surprising since obviously there is an ethical teaching in Buddhism and clearly there are other forms of Buddhist philosophy. In my view, there is something that can plausibly be called moral philosophy in Indian Buddhism, but it is not quite what many people have expected because they have approached the issue from a specific understanding of philosophy that (...) is too limited. I propose to defend this interpretation by reshaping Mark Siderits’ concept of fusion philosophy. The fusion I will propose reveals a form of moral philosophy that may be called self-cultivation philosophy. I will argue that this was a common activity in ancient Chinese, Greek and Indian cultures—including especially early Buddhist thought and practice. (shrink)

"The book defends the thesis that the concept of self-cultivation philosophy is an informative interpretive framework for comprehending and reflecting on several philosophical outlooks in India, the Greco-Roman world and China. On the basis of an understanding of human nature and the place of human beings in the world, self-cultivation philosophies maintain that our lives can and should be substantially transformed from what is judged to be a problematic, untutored condition of human beings, our existential starting-point, into what (...) is put forward as an ideal state of being. We are to do this by undertaking a set of therapeutic or spiritual exercises guided by some philosophical analysis. The self-cultivation philosophies in India are expressed in: the Bhagavad Gītā; the Sāṃkhya and Yoga philosophies of Īśvarakṛṣṇa and Patañjali; and teaching of the Buddha and his followers Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva. The philosophies originating in Greece, with subsequent development in the Roman period, are the most prominent Hellenistic approaches: the Epicureanism of Epicurus, Lucretius and Philodemus; the Stoicism of Chrysippus, Epictetus and Seneca; and Pyrrho and the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus. The self-cultivation philosophies from China are the early Confucian outlooks of Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi; the classical Daoist perspectives of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi; and the Chan tradition of Bodhidharma, Huineng and Linji"--. (shrink)