Forms of Injustice and Regression

Over the last years, the debate over global justice has moved beyond the divide between statist and cosmopolitan, as well as ideal and non-ideal approaches. Rather, a turn to empirical realities has taken place, claiming that normative political philosophy and theory need to address empirical facts about global poverty and wealth. The talk argues that some aspects of the earlier “Critical Theory” and its notions of negativity, praxis, and communicative power allow for a non-empiristic link between normative theory and a well-informed social science analysis that is based on experienced injustice. The analysis of border politics and housing politics will serve as an example for a critical theory of global injustice that addresses regressive as well as emancipative developments in society.

Justice as a Personal Virtue and Justice as an Institutional Virtue: Mencius’s Confucian Virtue Politics

It has been widely observed that virtue ethics, regarded as an ethics of the ancient, in contrast to deontology and consequentialism, seen as an ethics of the modern (Larmore 1996: 19–23), is experiencing an impressive revival and is becoming a strong rival to utilitarianism and deontology in the English-speaking world in the last a few decades. Despite this, it has been perceived as having an obvious weakness in comparison with its two major rivals. While both utilitarianism and deontology can at the same time serve as an ethical theory, providing guidance for individual persons and a political philosophy, offering ways to structure social institutions, virtue ethics, as it is concerned with character traits of individual persons, seems to be ill-equipped to be politically useful. In recent years, some attempts have been made to develop the so-called virtue politics, but most of them, including my own (see Huang 2014: Chapter 5), are limited to arguing for the perfectionist view that the state has the obligation to do things to help its members develop their virtues, and so the focus is still on the character traits of individual persons. However important those attempts are, such a notion of virtue politics is clearly too narrow, unless one thinks that the only job the state is supposed to do is to cultivate its people’s virtues. Yet obviously the government has many other jobs to do such as making laws and social policies, many if not most of which are not for the purpose of making people virtuous. The question is then in what sense such laws and social policies are moral in general and just in particular. Utilitarianism and deontology have their ready answers in the light of utility or moral principles respectively. Can virtue ethics provide its own answer? This paper attempts to argue for an affirmative answer to this question from the Confucian point of view, as represented by Mencius. It does so with a focus on the virtue of justice, as it is a central concept in both virtue ethics and political philosophy.

Sheng-Sheng (生生) as Being-Between-Generations: On the Existential Structure of Confucian Ethics

On the level of existential structure, “Shengsheng Buxi” unfolds an existential structure different from Heidegger’s “being-in-the-world”. This paper calls it “being-between-the-generations”. Through this existential structure, it reveals many aspects which Heidegger ignored in his existential analysis. The existence of “I” between generations is, first of all, a conjunction of generations, “this body” has its own origin. Its original facing the Other is to love his/her parents, and showing the structure of “being-together-with-the-generations” in filial piety; family implements the existence of “inheritance”, thus gaining its ontological status in this structure. The state of mood in generations shows the “Enjoyment-at-home” of this-body; at the same time, being-between-the-generations also makes “learning” and “teaching” indispensable and essential moments in the existential structure, and makes the “Project” of “trans-generations” possible. The “historicity” formed by “generations” has an impact on this. Ultimately, in the memorial ceremony of “death of parents and ancestors”, it builds the structure of “being-together-with-the-generations” within a family, and maintains the dimension of transcendence, in the way of filial piety, whose nature is revealed in The Analects as “Tribute to the death of parents and keeping memory of ancestors” (慎終追遠).

The Openness of Life-world and the Intercultural Polylogue

The phenomenological conception of “life-world” lays the theoretical foundation for the openness of the world. The founding relationship between the individual and the world, the interactive relationship among different cultural worlds on the intersubjective level, the free nature of truth and its presence in the open world, the “ek-sistent” characteristics of the human-being, the structural constitution of the life-world – all these topics demonstrate the open nature of the world in a phenomenological way. Based on these ideas, “reflective judgment” as “phronesis” and “fear” as ethic sentiment based on family experience become the practical stance, which is consistent with the “life-world” conception of phenomenology; the characteristics of publicness and intersubjectivity of the open world are thus maintained. In the face of the multicultural world, this attitude presents as a brand-new practice of intercultural philosophy, which is different from the centralism found under the framework of monism and the comparative philosophy under the framework of dualism. Such a practice of intercultural philosophy is “polylog”, i.e. based on the principles of difference and equality and searching for the “overlapping consensus” in full multi-participatory discussion. Through polylog, a harmonious life of human community is constructed. This paper attempts to derive a set of practical principles for maintaining the openness of the world and intercultural polylog in the era of globalization from the theoretical view of the phenomenological life-world.

How to Justify Principles of Justice

John Rawls assumes that in the original position, under the veil of ignorance, after bargaining amongst each other, free, equal, moral and rational persons would make a rational decision to accept the principles of justice as fairness and thus the principles are established. Critics, however, question the authenticity and validity of this justification strategy. When rational individuals take the principles of justice as an original agreement, it is not a real contract. Rawls’s conception of justice as fairness is just a personal notion, some individuals may accept it, but it is impossible to be accepted by all human beings in a real world. Therefore there is a justification/acceptance paradox of those principles which are the core of his political philosophy. So how should we justify those principles? Its answers may be provided not in the light of a philosophical justification but of a scientific one.

Global Justice: A Utopia and Concern of Humanitarianism

Global justice or the lack thereof has internal connections with global poverty. Global justice is an ideal pursuit of cosmopolitanism, which regards basic human needs as its rightful object. The right to life, from the point of view of global justice, is the most fundamental in the list of Human Rights. International anarchy and the current international economic order, however, cast a utopian shadow on the realization of this right when we consider the de facto institutions and the ostensible goal of impartial love for everyone. Humanitarian aid is another approach to the problem of contemporary global poverty. Its difficulty lies first in people’s different conceptions of obligation and donation. They consider the former as duty while the latter is seen to lie beyond the call of duty. Second, in terms of a correlation between right and duty, since everyone has the right to life, the duty falls accordingly upon organizations or individuals. Meanwhile, donation as duty is not perfect obligation, thus is not compulsory either. Finally, international humanitarian aid is constrained by nationalism and partial love. Hence, in the light of either government or individual, the humanitarian aid approach is beset with challenges.Global justice has gained academic importance worldwide since John Rawls’ later works. By contrast to domestic justice, it is a theory of justice that proposes to include all human beings. Global justice stands for a kind of utopian justice in regard to both the institutional path and the humanitarian aid approach. I shall examine the theory of global justice under these two aspects.

Subjekt und Person: Zwei Selbst-Bilder des modernen Menschen in kulturübergreifender Perspektive

Die beiden Begriffe „Subjekt“ und „Person“ repräsentieren zwei verschiedene Weisen, wie der abendländische Mensch zum Verständnis seines eigenen „Selbst“ gelangt. Während „Subjekt“ auf eine Selbstzentrierung hindrängt, bedeutet „Person“ von Anfang an eine „selbst-lose“ Einfühlung in den Anderen. Nach der Explikation dieser beiden Schlüsselbegriffe sollen einige weiterführende Reflexionen auf das Problem des „Selbst“ aus der Sicht der chinesischen Philosophie sichtbar machen, wie das Problem von einer post-europäischen Perspektive aus betrachtet werden kann.