A Relational Moral Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Metz
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Global South ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Respect For Autonomy ◽  
Relational Perspective ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Standing Question ◽  
Blind Spots

A Relational Moral Theory provides a new answer to the long-standing question of what all morally right actions might have in common as distinct from wrong ones, by drawing on neglected resources from the Global South and especially the African philosophical tradition. The book points out that the principles of utility and of respect for autonomy, the two rivals that have dominated Western moral theory for about two centuries, share an individualist premise. Once that common assumption is replaced by a relational perspective that has been salient in African ethical thought, a different comprehensive principle focused on harmony or friendliness emerges, one that is shown to correct the blind spots of the Western principles and to have implications for a wide array of applied controversies that an international audience of moral philosophers, professional ethicists, and similar thinkers will find attractive.

scholarly journals A Critical Recuperation of Watsuji’s Rinrigaku

Philosophia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleardo Zanghellini ◽  
Mai Sato
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Ethical Action ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
International Audience ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Ethical Obligations

AbstractWatsuji is recognised as one Japan’s foremost philosophers. His work on ethics, Rinrigaku, is cosmopolitan in engaging the Western philosophical tradition, and in presupposing an international audience. Yet Watsuji’s ethical thought is largely of niche interest outside Japan, and it is critiqued on the ground that it ratifies totalitarianism, demanding individuals’ unquestioning subordination to communal demands. We offer a reading of Rinrigaku that, in attempting to trace the text’s intention, disputes these arguments. We argue that Rinrigaku makes individual autonomy central to ethical action, despite the fact that its treatment of coercion may lead one to think otherwise; that it does not reduce ethical obligations to whatever demands any given society imposes on its members; that it draws a distinction between socio-ethical orders that are genuinely ethical and those that are not; and that, in insisting on the grounding of individuals in the Absolute, it makes adequate room for individuals’ resistance to unjustifiable socio-ethical demands.

Southern Processes of Planetary Urbanization in Hartford

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-48
Author(s):  
Garth Myers
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Urban Area ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
Historical Geography ◽  
Global South ◽  
Global North ◽  
Postcolonial Caribbean ◽  
Blind Spots

Chapter one examines historical processes of urbanization, with the focus on Hartford, seen from indigenous, postcolonial, Caribbean and African/African-American re-mappings of its metropolitan geographies. The chapter thus applies global South ideas to an examination of planetary urbanization in an urban area conventionally located in the global North. It argues that southern concepts are highly relevant to understanding and remapping Hartford as a global urbanism. Developing an historical geography from indigenous, postcolonial, and southern angles gives opportunities for detailing the specificities of planetarizing processes. Scholars need to look at longer-term processes producing planetary urbanization from elsewhere, to erase blind spots that universalizing theorizations produce. Here, this means rethinking the historical geography of indigenous peoples in the region, slavery, and labor migration.

scholarly journals Francis Hutcheson and the Heathen Moralists

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ahnert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Intellectual Achievement ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Throughout his career Hutcheson praised the achievements of the pagan moral philosophers of classical antiquity, the Stoics in particular. In recent secondary literature his moral theory has been characterized as a synthesis of Christianity and Stoicism. Yet Hutcheson's attitude towards the ancient heathen moralists was more complex and ambivalent than this idea of ‘Christian Stoicism’ suggests. According to Hutcheson, pagans who did not believe in Christ and who had never even heard of him were capable of virtue, and even, he asserted controversially, of salvation. Yet Hutcheson did not think that the virtue of pagans, let alone their salvation, was a result of their moral philosophical theories. Hutcheson's applause for pagan philosophy as an intellectual achievement did not indicate a commitment to it, but was based on a detached and cautious evaluation that involved significant reservations concerning the truth and usefulness of pagan ethical thought.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Metz
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issue ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Common Part ◽  
Communal Relationship ◽  
Respect For Autonomy ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Better Than

Chapter 1 explains and motivates the project of advancing an African moral theory, after which it provides an overview of the book. An African moral theory is a basic, comprehensive principle distinguishing right from wrong actions that is informed by mores salient particularly in the sub-Saharan region. It is advanced as a rival to the principles of utility and of respect for autonomy, the primary Western answers to the important question of what all right actions have in common. Part I of the book discusses the meta-ethical issue of how to justify an African moral theory. Part II identifies three major candidates for a moral theory in the African tradition, and argues that one, grounded on communal relationship, is most promising. Part III argues that the relational moral theory does better than the principles of utility and of respect for autonomy at accounting for a wide array of applied controversies.

scholarly journals Vehicular Cross-Border Languages, Multilingualism and the African Integration Debate: A Decolonial Epistemic Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Finex Ndhlovu
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Global South ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Communication Problems ◽  
Perceived Utility ◽  
Language Definition ◽  
Epistemic Perspective ◽  
Blind Spots

The proposition that African vehicular cross-border languages are best positioned to facilitate African integration is underpinned by a hegemonic and colonial philosophy that misdirects the African multilingual debate. This becomes apparent when the perceived utility of this category of languages is considered against the backdrop of contestations surrounding language definition traditions and the incidence of language multiversity in Africa1. Drawing on the ideas of decolonial scholarship from the Global South, this article provides a critical analysis of African vehicular cross-border languages and perceptions about their ability to resolve the anticipated intercultural communication problems of an integrated Africa. The article seeks to bring to the limelight some of the fundamental omissions and blind spots of such projective conclusions about the potential of vehicular cross-border languages and how such projections are shaped by dominant, neo-liberal and conservative language ideologies and ideologies of (or about) language.

Research Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-200
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Metz
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Medical Field ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
Ancillary Care ◽  
Study Participants

Chapter 10 addresses the duties of researchers, particularly those in the medical field, again contending that the relational moral theory is revealing relative to Western competitors. It first proffers a new account of the obligation to obtain free and informed consent to participate in a study, as something to be upheld not so much as a way to promote health (utilitarianism) or to avoid degrading autonomy (Kantianism), but more as a way to respect people as capable of communal or friendly relationship. Rightness as friendliness is next shown to entail duties of confidentiality, albeit, plausibly, ones not as stringent as what is common in Western ethical thought. Lastly, the chapter argues that the communal ethic grounds a powerful account of ancillary care obligations—duties to compensate for harms that have befallen study participants that the study did not cause—by giving an account that challenges an influential autonomy-based theory of them.

Feminism, Ethics, and the Question of Theory

Hypatia ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Urban Walker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Moral Theories

Feminist discussions of ethics in the Western philosophical tradition range from critiques of the substance of dominant moral theories to critiques of the very practice of “doing ethics” itself. I argue that these critiques really target a certain historically specific model of ethics and moral theory—a “theoretical-juridical” one. I outline an “expressive'Collaborative” conception of morality and ethics that could be a politically self-conscious and reflexively critical alternative.

scholarly journals The probability of planarity of a random graph near the critical point

2013 ◽  
Vol DMTCS Proceedings vol. AS,... (Proceedings) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Noy ◽  
Vlady Ravelomanana ◽  
Juanjo Rué
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Random Graph ◽  
Random Graphs ◽  
Generating Functions ◽  
Exact Expression ◽  
Critical Window ◽  
Analytic Combinatorics ◽  
Analytic Methods ◽  
International Audience ◽  
Standing Question

International audience Erdős and Rényi conjectured in 1960 that the limiting probability $p$ that a random graph with $n$ vertices and $M=n/2$ edges is planar exists. It has been shown that indeed p exists and is a constant strictly between 0 and 1. In this paper we answer completely this long standing question by finding an exact expression for this probability, whose approximate value turns out to be $p ≈0.99780$. More generally, we compute the probability of planarity at the critical window of width $n^{2/3}$ around the critical point $M=n/2$. We extend these results to some classes of graphs closed under taking minors. As an example, we show that the probability of being series-parallel converges to 0.98003. Our proofs rely on exploiting the structure of random graphs in the critical window, obtained previously by Janson, Łuczak and Wierman, by means of generating functions and analytic methods. This is a striking example of how analytic combinatorics can be applied to classical problems on random graphs.

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