Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Nathan Myrick
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Ethical Significance

This chapter introduces the topic of musical worship and ethics. It describes the rationale for the book and the research that inspired it, along with the scope of its claims. In highlighting the importance of ethical reflection on the activity of musical worship, particularly the intersections and ongoing synergies of ritual, community, subjectivities, aesthetics, dogma, and personal identities, the chapter situates the book as one in a line of interdisciplinary scholarship that provides a variety of perspectives on a given subject—in this case, the ethical significance of musical worship.

Ethics and Literature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mulhall
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Internal Relation ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Literary Techniques ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
Suitable Expression

Moral philosophers typically assume that literary texts have no significance for ethical reflection beyond providing one possible source of examples of moral problems. This is in line with philosophy’s long-standing hostility towards literature; it is described as an ancient quarrel even by Plato, whose expulsion of the poets from his republic is often cited as a founding gesture of the discipline. However, some recent writers on ethics contest this assumption. Neo-Aristotelian theorists see the novel as a medium in which their approach finds its most suitable expression. Proponents of moral perfectionism see literary techniques as indispensable in achieving their desired relation to their readers. Others of no particular theoretical affiliation see literary texts as exemplifying the internal relation of reason to imagination, feeling and sensibility in fundamental modes of moral thought. Taken as a whole, these arguments suggest that a moral philosopher’s evaluation of the ethical significance of literature reveals fundamental features of their conception of ethics in general, of the relation between moral philosophy and other philosophical concerns or questions, and hence of philosophy itself.

Understanding Climate Change as an Existential Threat: Confronting Climate Denial as a Challenge to Climate Ethics

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Christion Myers
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Climate Ethics ◽  
The World ◽  
Public Responsibility ◽  
Ethical Significance

Climate change cannot be managed by experts and politicians alone. Consequently, climate ethics must take up the challenge of inviting public responsibility on this issue. New sociological research on climate denial by Kari Norgaard, however, suggests that most citizens of industrialized countries are ill-prepared to cope with the ethical significance of climate change. I draw upon Martin Heidegger to offer a new reading of climate denial that suggests viable responses to this problem. I argue that the implications of climate change are largely received as an ‘existential threat’ to the extent that they endanger the integrity of everyday existence. In other words, the implications of climate change for everyday life unsettle what phenomenologists call the ‘lifeworld’. Should basic lifeworld assumptions, which cultures rely on to makes sense of the world and their purposes in it, come under serious question, anxieties surface that most people are profoundly motivated to avoid. Hence, the ethical obligations entailed by climate change are ‘denied’ in the form of protecting lifeworld integrity for the sake of containing anxieties that would otherwise overwhelm people. Finally, I submit that existential approaches to climate denial can empower a confrontation with ‘climate anxiety’ in ways that open up ethical reflection.

scholarly journals “L’enfer, c’est les autres”: Proximity as an Ethical Problem during COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Strong ◽  
Susanna Trnka ◽  
L. L. Wynn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
The World ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
Shed Light

During the COVID-19 emergency, people around the world are debating concepts like physical distancing, lockdown, and sheltering in place. The ethical significance of proximity—that is, closeness or farness as ethical qualities of relations (Strathern 2020)—is thus being newly troubled across a range of habits, practices, and personal relationships. Through five case studies from Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States, contributors to this Colloquy shed light on what the hype of the pandemic often conceals: the forms of ethical reflection, reasoning, and conduct fashioned during the pandemic.

An Ethical Postlude

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Teubner
Keyword(s):  
Alasdair Macintyre ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Critical Engagement

‘An Ethical Postlude’ returns to reflect directly on an understanding of tradition that frames how Boethius and Benedict relate to Augustine vis-à-vis the theme of prayer. This final chapter reflects on the kinematics of tradition, that is, on the actual motions qua motions of the act of tradition. This chapter engages the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jeffrey Stout, both of whom have offered challenges to religious ethicists to broaden their historical horizons. Through critical engagement with MacIntyre and Stout, this chapter presents a case for an historical approach to Christian existence which can still give rise to meaningful moral and ethical reflection without having to accept (consciously or unconsciously) a Hegelian metaphysics of history.

Transdisciplinarity

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
James Mittelman ◽  
Daniel Esser
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Transdisciplinary Research ◽  
Global Studies ◽  
Local Dynamics ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Methodological Rigor ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Science Disciplines

This chapter assesses transdisciplinarity as an epistemological and methodological approach to research and teaching in the emerging field of global studies. It posits that the world’s most pressing problems in the areas of migration, health, and intersectional identities, to name a few, are unlikely to be addressed convincingly by inquiries rooted exclusively in singular social science disciplines. At the same time, transdisciplinarity is understood as a means to complement disciplinary research, not to dispense with it. By foregrounding global–local dynamics and their effects across scales, global studies can draw from a wealth of approaches and experiences in interdisciplinary scholarship without becoming entangled in protracted epistemological battles over scholarly turf. This chapter then provides examples of transdisciplinary research in global studies and closes by stressing the importance of disciplinary methodological innovations as building blocks for multimodal designs and arguing for methodological rigor in global studies, whether transdisciplinary or not.

Rape Appraisals: Class Mobility, Social Geography, and Sexual Morality Tales in Ghana, South Africa, and Rwanda

2021 ◽  
pp. 009579842110080
Author(s):  
C. Shawn McGuffey
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
Stressful Events ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Rape Survivors ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship

Interdisciplinary scholarship in violence and trauma studies suggest that a person’s interpretation of stressful events contours how the person will respond. It is through the two-part appraisal process that survivors determine how they will cope. This project utilizes an identity-based approach to demonstrate that survivors use group-based ideologies such as social class, geography, gender, sexuality, and, for some, race to appraise their accounts of violence, assess their coping strategies, and manage traumatic events. Using the cross-cultural accounts of 146 Black Ghanaian, South African, and Rwandan women rape survivors, the findings extend the appraisal approach by highlighting how survivors in this study utilized sexual morality tales to construct a variety of appraisal accounts to interpret their assaults and to justify their coping strategies. I call these appraisals opportunities, possibilities, limitations, and solidarities. These differing appraisals demonstrated that social milieu contours the psychological experience of violence and can engender both parallel and divergent interpretations across social class and cultural contexts. Last, the implications of these findings for comparative sexual assault studies, theories of traumatic coping, gender and development, and intersectionality are discussed.

scholarly journals The Dynamics of Musical Participation

2021 ◽  
pp. 102986492098831
Author(s):  
Andrea Schiavio ◽  
Pieter-Jan Maes ◽  
Dylan van der Schyff
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical System ◽  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Dynamical Systems Theory ◽  
Coordination Dynamics ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
The Core ◽  
Interactive Dynamics ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
Core Features

In this paper we argue that our comprehension of musical participation—the complex network of interactive dynamics involved in collaborative musical experience—can benefit from an analysis inspired by the existing frameworks of dynamical systems theory and coordination dynamics. These approaches can offer novel theoretical tools to help music researchers describe a number of central aspects of joint musical experience in greater detail, such as prediction, adaptivity, social cohesion, reciprocity, and reward. While most musicians involved in collective forms of musicking already have some familiarity with these terms and their associated experiences, we currently lack an analytical vocabulary to approach them in a more targeted way. To fill this gap, we adopt insights from these frameworks to suggest that musical participation may be advantageously characterized as an open, non-equilibrium, dynamical system. In particular, we suggest that research informed by dynamical systems theory might stimulate new interdisciplinary scholarship at the crossroads of musicology, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive (neuro)science, pointing toward new understandings of the core features of musical participation.

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