Conceptualizing Personhood for Sustainability: A Buddhist Virtue Ethics Perspective

This conceptual paper addresses the role the individual plays in sustainability against the backdrop of the ethical dimensions of sustainability. We discuss the relevance of moral personhood as a basis for sustainability and develop a model of personhood for sustainability. The paper outlines the ethical dimensions of sustainability and discusses the role of individual morality for sustainability from a virtue ethics perspective. We employ a Buddhist virtue ethical approach for conceptualizing a model of the sustainable person that is characterized by sustainability virtues, interdependent personhood, and an inherent concern for the wellbeing of others, nature, and future beings. In contrast to many Western-based conceptions of the individual actor, our model of sustainable personhood conceptualizes and explains a coherent and inherent individual motivation for sustainability. The paper contributes to the methodological question of how to best consider the individual in sustainability research and sustainability approaches and suggests a conceptual basis for integrating individual, institutional, and systemic aspects of sustainability.

In defence of newborns: a response to Kingma

Recently, I argued that subjects inside of artificial wombs—termed ‘gestatelings’ by Romanis—share the same legal and moral status as newborns (neonates). Gestatelings, on my view, are persons in both a legal and moral sense. Kingma challenges these claims. Specifically, Kingma argues that my previous argument is invalid, as it equivocates on the term ‘newborn’. Kingma concludes that questions about the legal and moral status of gestatelings remain ‘unanswered’. I am grateful to Kingma for raising potential concerns with the view I have presented. In this essay, however, I argue that (most) of Kingma’s objections are unpersuasive. First, my original argument does not equivocate on terms like ‘newborn’ or ‘neonate’. The terms denote human beings that have been born recently; that is what matters to the argument. Charges of equivocation, I suspect, rest on a confusion between the denotation and connotations of ‘newborn’ (or ‘neonate’). Next, I show that, contra Kingma, it is clear that—under current law in the USA and UK—gestatelings would count as legal persons. Moral personhood is more difficult. On that subject, Kingma’s criticisms have merit. In response, however, I show that my original claim—that gestatelings should count as moral persons—remains true on several (common) philosophical accounts of personhood. Regarding those accounts that imply gestatelings are not moral persons, I argue that advocates face a troubling dilemma. I conclude that regardless of which view of moral personhood one adopts, questions about the moral status of gestatelings are not ‘unanswered’.

Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders: Moral and Religious Differences

This chapter focuses on Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s responses to Locke’s account of persons and personal identity. Both philosophers generally share Locke’s metaphysically agnostic views, but disagree with Locke on moral and religious grounds. By contrasting their moral and religious views we can see how their different moral and religious views shape their thinking about persons and personal identity and understand why Shaftesbury and Hume develop views that differ from Locke’s. The chapter pays particular attention to how Shaftesbury and Hume each criticize psychological accounts of personal identity and what role their underlying moral and religious views play. Moreover, both philosophers reject moral theories grounded in divine law like Locke’s. Since Locke’s account of moral personhood can be separated from his psychological account of personal identity, it is interesting to ask how philosophers who do not share Locke’s moral views approach or can approach moral personhood.

Moral Personhood and Personal Identity

This chapter applies Locke’s kind-dependent account of identity to persons. First, the author argues that Lockean persons belong to a moral and legal kind of being: they are subjects of accountability. This interpretation gives full credit to Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term, but it also shows that his arguments presuppose a particular conception of morality that is grounded in divine law and the power to enforce morality by reward and punishment. Next, the chapter asks how Locke’s moral and legal account of personhood enables us to specify persistence conditions for persons. It is argued that it is helpful to examine Locke’s understanding of just accountability. For Locke sameness of consciousness is a necessary condition for moral accountability. This makes it possible to establish that sameness of consciousness is a necessary condition for personal identity. Yet it is also acknowledged that Locke thinks about moral accountability in particular and controversial ways. The chapter ends by offering fine-grained distinctions for understanding the relation between morality and metaphysics in Locke’s account of personal identity.

Wolf Hall and moral personhood

Can a good man do evil things? This paper offers a moral philosophical reading of Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the bodies, focusing on Mantel’s fictional portrayal of Thomas Cromwell as a good person, in spite of his growing involvement in the dirty work of Henry VIII. The narrative resists interpretations of Cromwell as someone corrupted by power. It also thwarts attempts to read his deeds as results of a deficient capacity for sympathetic imagination, which has been a focalized moral flaw in contemporary moral philosophical discussions of literature. By thus resisting moralized readings of his character, the novels invite intensified attention to the complex dynamics of character and circumstance.

Senses of Morality and Morality of the Senses

Non-verbal communication, while never separate from verbal communication, has a distinct signifying value in the context of Lamu. Because the exchange of verbal greetings carries implications for an individual’s respectability, individuals frequently rely on non-verbal language to communicate while in public. Chapter Five therefore looks at how material practices and the moving body are implicated in the negotiation of social change and the emergence of new social positionings. It examines how young men and women in Lamu differently use material and bodily practices—e.g. stride, walking route, hand greetings, gaze, clothing—to gradually redefine norms of proper conduct and social status. A closer look at young women’s use of handshakes, the ethnographic vignette of a young female professional accused of immoral conduct, and the story of a beach boy who becomes a local politician illustrate the different means through which young people negotiate a respectful positions within the Lamu community. The theoretical discussion in this chapter focuses on gender, material practice, and the moving body in relation to ideologies of moral personhood and notions of modernity.

Morality at the Margins

This book considers the day-to-day lives of young Muslims on the island of Lamu (Kenya) who live simultaneously “on the edge and in the center”: they are situated at the edge of the (inter)national economy and at the margins of Western notions of modernity; yet they are concurrently the focus of (inter)national campaigns against Islamic radicalization and are at the heart of Western (touristic) imaginations of the untouched and secluded. What does it mean to be young, modern, and Muslim in this context? And how are these denominators differently imagined and enacted in daily encounters? Documenting the everyday lives of Lamu youth, this ethnography explores how young people negotiate different cultural, religious, political and economic pressures and expectations through nuanced deployments of language, dress, and bodily comportment. It thereby illustrates how seemingly mundane practices—from how young people greet others, to how they walk, dress, and talk—can become tactics in the negotiation of moral personhood. A central concern of the book lies with the shifting meaning and ambiguity of such everyday signs and thus the dangers of semiotic misconstrual. By examining this uncertainty of interpretation in projects of self-fashioning, the book highlights how shifting and scalable discourses of tradition, modernity, secularization, nationalism, and religious piety inform changing notions of moral subjectivity. Documenting how Lamu youth navigate this contested field in a fast-changing place with a fascinating history, this book offers a distinctly linguistic anthropological approach to discussions of ethical self-fashioning and everyday Islam.