Explorations in Ethics is a collection of essays with a speculative bent. Its twelve contributors attempt to take ethics thinking in new directions. Ethics is fundamentally a speculative discipline. We sometimes lose sight of that because of our current scholarly practices, which include reliance on a set of traditional works in ethics, deferring to the scholarly literature, drawing from the evidential sources afforded us. This volume breaks the mold. It is committed, first and foremost, to exploring new ground in a methodologically sound way whilst respecting and building on the literature where needed. The contributors range from world renowned ethicists to early-career scholars. The ethical standpoints represented are various and the overall aim of this collection is to stimulate fresh thinking.
Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. The contributors draw from both communities of discourse in addressing questions of method and theory and global moral issuessuch as human rights, distributive justice, politics of war, international business, the environment, and genocidein a cross-cultural context. }Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. Its design is premised on two important insights. First, interreligious dialogue offers to comparative religious ethics a new, more persuasive rationale, agenda of issues, and practical orientation. Second, comparative religious ethics offers to interreligious dialogue an arsenal of critical tools and methods which will enhance the sophistication of its practical work. In this way, both theory (a dominant concern and strength of comparative religious ethics) and praxis (a dominant concern and strength of interreligious moral dialogue) are joined together in mutual effort, each contributing to the benefit of the other.The volumes contributors share this vision of collaboration, drawing explicitly from both communities of discourse in a manner that crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries to deal creatively and constructively with important methodological and global moral issue. Although theory and practice cannot easily be separated in such a collaborative project, for the purpose of clarity, the volume is divided into two main parts. The first specifically engages questions of method, theory, and the social role of the public intellectual; the second, on substantive moral themes and issues, many of which were raised at the 1993 Parliament. Taken together, the volumes essays articulate and illustrate new ways of approaching contemporary moral concerns cross-culturally yet with a rigor appropriate to our complex and pluralistic world.
Kristien Hens succeeds in weaving together experiential expertise of both people with autism and their parents, scientific insights and ethics, and does so with great passion and affection for people with autism (with or without mental or other disabilities). In this book she not only asks pertinent questions, but also critically examines established claims that fail to take into account the criticism and experiences of people with autism. Sam Peeters, author of Autistic Gelukkig (Garant, 2018) and Gedurfde vragen (Garant, 2020); blog @ Tistje.com What does it mean to say that someone is autistic? Towards an Ethics of Autism is an exploration of this question and many more. In this thoughtful, wide-ranging book, Kristien Hens examines a number of perspectives on autism, including psychiatric, biological, and philosophical, to consider different ways of thinking about autism, as well as its meanings to those who experience it, those who diagnose it, and those who research it. Hens delves into the history of autism and its roots in the work of Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger to inform a contemporary ethical analysis of the models we use to understand autism today. She explores the various impacts of a diagnosis on autistic people and their families, the relevance of disability studies, the need to include autistic people fully in discussions about (and research on) autism, and the significance of epigenetics to future work on autism. Hens weaves together a variety of perspectives that guide the reader in their own ethical reflections about autism. Rich, accessible, and multi-layered, this is essential reading for philosophers, educational scientists, and psychologists who are interested in philosophical-ethical questions related to autism, but it also has much to offer to teachers, allied health professionals, and autistic people themselves.
This book aims to contribute significantly to the understanding of issues of value (including the ultimate value of space-related activities) which repeatedly emerge in interdisciplinary discussions on space and society. Although a recurring feature of discussions about space in the humanities, the treatment of value questions has tended to be patchy, of uneven quality and even, on occasion, idiosyncratic rather than drawing upon a close familiarity with state-of-the-art ethical theory. One of the volume's aims is to promote a more robust and theoretically informed approach to the ethical dimension of discussions on space and society. While the contributions are written in a manner which is accessible across disciplines, the book still withstands scrutiny by those whose work is primarily on ethics. At the same time it allows academics across a range of disciplines an insight into current approaches toward how the work of ethics gets done. The issues of value raised could be used to inform debates about regulation, space law and protocols for microbial discovery as well as longer-range policy debates about funding.
This volume explores various themes at the intersection of archaeology and philosophy: inference and theory; interdisciplinary connections; cognition, language and normativity; and ethical issues. Showcasing this heterogeneity, its scope ranges from the method of analogical inference to the evolution of the human mind; from conceptual issues in assessing the health of past populations to the ethics of cultural heritage tourism. It probes the archaeological record for evidence of numeracy, curiosity and creativity, and social complexity. Its contributors comprise an interdisciplinary cluster of philosophers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, from a variety of career stages, of whom many are leading experts in their fields. Chapter 3 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
John Skorupski develops in these essays a distinctive and systematic moral philosophy: he examines the central ethical concepts of reasons, the good, and morality, and applies the results to issues of culture and politics. He makes firm the connection between liberal politics and its ethical ideal, and links that ideal to modern morality and modern ideas of the good.
Ethics in business is a major topic both in the social sciences and in business itself. Anthropologists, long attendant to the intersection of ethics and practice, are particularly well suited to offer vital insights on the subject. This timely collection considers a range of ethical issues in business through the examination of anthropologically informed theory and case examples. The meaning of ethical values, practices, and education are explored, as well as practical ways of implementing them, while the specific ethical challenges of industries such as advertising, market research, and design are considered. Contributions from anthropologists in business and academia promise a broad range of perspectives and add to the growing discussion on the ways anthropologists study, work, teach, and engage in a variety of industry settings. Engagingly written, Ethics in the Anthropology of Business will be of interest to a wide variety of audiences, including practicing anthropologists, current and future business leaders, and scholars and students from a range of social sciences.
With historical-critical analysis and dialogical even-handedness, the essays of this book re-assess the life and legacy of Swami Vivekananda, forged at a time of colonial suppression, from the vantage point of socially-engaged religion at a time of global dislocations and international inequities. Due to the complexity of Vivekananda as a historical figure on the cusp of late modernity with its vast transformations, few works offer a contemporary, multi-vocal, nuanced, academic examination of his liberative vision and legacy in the way that this volume does. It brings together North American, European, British, and Indian scholars associated with a broad array of humanistic disciplines towards critical-constructive, contextually-sensitive reflections on one of the most important thinkers and theologians of the modern era.
