Vital Force

Chapter 5 addresses the moral theory suggested by the African tradition according to which one is obligated to promote (or honour) liveliness in oneself and others. This sort of principle has been advanced by philosophers such as Noah Dzobo, Bénézet Bujo, and Laurenti Magesa. Vitalism is a globally under-explored approach to right action that deserves much more consideration. However, the chapter concludes that it cannot account for some comparatively uncontroversial moral claims salient in the African tradition. Sometimes settling for majoritarian rule and avoiding reconciliation in respect of criminal justice would best promote (or honour) liveliness, and yet most African philosophers would judge these actions to be wrong to some degree. The chapter also argues that vitalism cannot account for certain intuitions with a global scope; forbidding interracial marriage and deceiving people might best promote (or honour) liveliness, but ethicists around the world would judge these actions to be pro tanto immoral.

Reconsidering Ontology’s Relevance

This chapter and the next are methodological, focused on how to justify a moral theory. Many African philosophers believe that ethical claims follow immediately from ‘external’, metaphysical ones about human nature that must be established first. For example, Kwame Nkrumah maintains that an egalitarian ethic follows directly from a prior physicalist ontology, and Kwame Gyekye contends that his ‘moderate communitarian’ morality is derived from a certain conception of the self. Chapter 2 shows how these and similar rationales fail to clear the ‘is/ought gap’, as it is known in Western meta-ethics, and also how strategies one might use to bridge the gap do not work. It concludes that a more suitable way to defend a moral theory is to argue ‘internally’ to morality by appealing to intuitions, i.e., by determining which comparatively more controversial general principle of right action easily entails and best explains less controversial particular moral claims.

Conclusion

Chapter 13 concludes the book. It first highlights some of the communal ethic’s advantages compared to standard utilitarian and Kantian moral theories, recalling how it uniquely grounds judgements such as: animals have a moral status, albeit one less than that of humans; persons have a dignity of a sort that plausibly explains why reducing their quality of life matters morally; and despite people’s dignity’s demanding impartial consideration, an agent has duties to do more for those who have been in relationship with her. Then, the chapter sketches three projects it would be sensible to undertake, supposing the book’s central ideas have been worth taking seriously. Whereas the book focuses on prescriptive matters pertaining to right action in interpersonal contexts, it is also worth considering how well communality describes morality, whether it grounds an attractive account of good character, and what it entails for justice in legal, political, and economic institutions.

Action Theory in the Respective Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Chung-ying Cheng

This article advances a dialogue between the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the ontological hermeneutics of Chung-ying Cheng. This discussion draws into relief a question of whether or not these respective theories provide us with decision-making procedures for determining appropriate or right action in any given situation. In other words, we are inquiring into whether or not these respective hermeneutical theories incorporate forms of ethics. Following this line of questioning, we turn to Cheng’s philosophy of the Yijing and Gadamer’s analysis of Aristotle’s ethics.

A Stoic Ethics for Attention (Seneca Letter 56)

Seneca’s Letters sketch a theory of attentive action according to which distraction is caused by inconsistent beliefs about values, such that the degree of an agent’s attention to an endorsed action is proportionate to the consistency of her beliefs about value, i. e. her proximity to virtue. The agent’s activity of attentive action is co-ordinated with a state of alertness to her interests, which accordingly triggers switches in attention that sustain the endorsed action in single-minded agents or cause distraction if the new interest is irrelevant to it. Seneca’s theory reflects the older Stoic conception of the tensional mental strength of the virtuous agent, which Chrysippus identified as the causal factor over and above virtue that ensures her successful performance of right action.

Eudaimonism about Virtue and Qualified Agent Right Action: Some Prospects for Environmental Virtue Ethics

<p>In this thesis, I aim to show that virtue oriented approaches to environmental ethics are in a position to provide satisfying answers to two central ethical questions: “What kind of person should I be?”, and “What should I do?” I argue that two such approaches – Rosalind Hursthouse’s environmental virtue ethics and Philip Cafaro’s account of environmental vice – provide insights about how we ought to be with regard to the environment, in terms of character and attitudes. I then defend Hursthouse’s account of right action against several objections. First, I respond to the worry that a shortage of environmental exemplars might count against Hursthouse, by showing that non-virtuous agents can conceive of what to do by seeking to avoid acting from environmental vices. Second, I respond the worry that her account of right action fails to generate the right result for non-virtuous agents in some cases, by showing that such cases can be accounted for by appeal to the distinction between action guidance and action assessment. Third, I consider the worry that her theory will fail to provide concrete action guidance. Theories which seek to provide concrete action guidance in all contexts face serious problems of their own, I respond. Further, I maintain that Hursthouse is not ruled out from providing the sort of action guidance her critics are interested in.</p>

Eudaimonism about Virtue and Qualified Agent Right Action: Some Prospects for Environmental Virtue Ethics

<p>In this thesis, I aim to show that virtue oriented approaches to environmental ethics are in a position to provide satisfying answers to two central ethical questions: “What kind of person should I be?”, and “What should I do?” I argue that two such approaches – Rosalind Hursthouse’s environmental virtue ethics and Philip Cafaro’s account of environmental vice – provide insights about how we ought to be with regard to the environment, in terms of character and attitudes. I then defend Hursthouse’s account of right action against several objections. First, I respond to the worry that a shortage of environmental exemplars might count against Hursthouse, by showing that non-virtuous agents can conceive of what to do by seeking to avoid acting from environmental vices. Second, I respond the worry that her account of right action fails to generate the right result for non-virtuous agents in some cases, by showing that such cases can be accounted for by appeal to the distinction between action guidance and action assessment. Third, I consider the worry that her theory will fail to provide concrete action guidance. Theories which seek to provide concrete action guidance in all contexts face serious problems of their own, I respond. Further, I maintain that Hursthouse is not ruled out from providing the sort of action guidance her critics are interested in.</p>

Toward a personhood-based theory of right action: Investigating the Covid-19 pandemic and religious conspiracy theories in Africa

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in religious conspiracy theories (henceforth RCTs) in Africa, ranging from outright denial, partial acceptance to spreading misinformation about the Coronavirus. This essay will argue that RCTs pose serious challenges to Covid-19 prevention by encouraging non-compliance to Covid-19 preventive measures and refusal to take Covid-19 vaccination. It will then formulate a personhood-based theory of right action. This new theory will be teased out of Ifeanyi Menkiti's account of the normative conception of personhood and deployed here as a veritable tool for overcoming the challenges posed by RCTs in the fight against the COVID-19 Pandemic in Africa.

PATTERNS OF DEMOBILIZATION: A QUALITATIVE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS (QCA) OF FAR-RIGHT DEMONSTRATION CAMPAIGNS

Scholarship on social movement lifecycles has focused on mobilization processes, with relatively less attention on the ends, demobilization. The intuitive connection between origins and ends has sometimes led to a conceptualization of demobilization as simply the failure to continue mobilizing, obscuring the distinct causal processes underlying demobilization. This article adds to recent studies foregrounding demobilization by studying the negative demobilization of large, far-right, demonstration campaigns. Using a subset from this population of cases—campaigns in Germany, England, and Austria between 1990 and 2015—the article applies qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to this causally complex phenomenon. I find that demobilizing is conjunctural, with evidence of four patterns: closing opportunity, coercive state repression, civil countermobilization, and militant anti-far-right action. This article addresses an important—and conspicuously ubiquitous—population of cases, far-right demonstration campaigns and presents findings that reflect on critical issues in the study of far-right sociopolitics.

Plato on Normative Measurement

Chapter 6 addresses how the passage Statesman 283b1-287b3 centres on the Eleatic Visitor’s argument for the existence of normative measure: a kind of measure which is ‘due’ or ‘right’, and not reducible to the merely comparative kind. Normative measure is what the arts [technai] strive to instantiate, so that the existence of the arts is impossible without it. In the form of the kairos, the ‘right moment’, it is crucial to the art of the statesman in particular. The passage thus belongs to a constellation of Platonic texts in which the ideas of measure and craft are closely connected with each other, and central to his thinking about objectivity, rationality, and right action; these are also part of his engagement with sophistic thought, and Protagoras in particular.