Today, people are better informed about environmental degradation than ever before. However, this does not imply that people are more engaged toward ecological issues nor are they more committed to achieve greater ecological justice. In this respect, environmental education is paradigmatic: the current generation of young people is, by far and without any doubt, the most knowledgeable and aware of environmental problems thanks, among other things, to the presence since the end of the 20th century of environmental education in primary (...) and secondary school. However, levels of commitment to ecological issues that are significantly higher than before are not observed, except when it comes to individual pro-environmental behavior. How to link environmental awareness with a collective, political, ecosocial and ecocitizen commitment? In order to advance avenues for reflection on this issue, firstly this article presents the elements that characterize the current ecosocial crisis. Secondly, it addresses the ecosocial crisis as a crisis of knowledge that ultimately points to the challenge of transforming the visions of the world. Thirdly, it considers the ecosocial crisis as an opportunity that opens up the possibility of creating new worlds on the planet. Fourthly, the ecosocial crisis is presented as a crisis of contemporary education. Fifthly, it summarizes the two risks to consider in the practice of ecosocial education: the risk of dogmatism and the risk of blaming individuals for global problems. Finally, some clues are proposed that point to the Philosophy for children program as a program that can support the educational practice needed by the current educational and ecosocial crisis, as well as limits recognized risks of ecosocial education. (shrink)

I shall argue that the solution to the ecological crisis will require a combined political-economic and psychological-spiritual approach. Specifically, I will argue that while there is no way to avoid eco-catastrophe within the framework of capitalism, ecosocialism understood as a political-economic construct focused wholly or even primarily on the survival and flourishing of our species is not a sufficient solution and could, in its anthropocentric and productivist form, exacerbate the problem. What is needed is an understanding of ecosocialism that (...) is both biocentric and ecocentric, an ecosocialism that is sensitive to the suffering and inherent value of the members of other species as well as to the inherent value of whole ecosystems. It will require a new radically different mode of being and a radically new sensibility. I will argue that Buddhism can make a valuable contribution both to the construction of such a society and to the political praxis necessary to achieve it. (shrink)

Transformar el modo de vida individual es necesario para abordar la crisis ecosocial, y resulta perentorio que las políticas comprometidas con su resolución promocionen una capacidad individual de acción ecosocial. Sin embargo, parece que cierta brecha motivacional está obstaculizando la transformación del modo de vida individual. A fin de dar respuesta a esta brecha, ensayamos una mixtura del enfoque de las capacidades con las teorías de Hartmut Rosa. Argumentamos que la resonancia natural funge de factor personal de (...) conversión necesario, si bien no suficiente, para la capacidad de acción ecosocial; y que una política que promocione la resonancia natural se adecuaría también a los requisitos impuestos al desarrollo humano tanto por el enfoque de las capacidades como por la sostenibilidad. (shrink)

Este artículo propone una perspectiva histórica para analizar la crisis política y social acontecida desde octubre de 2019 en Chile. Se basa en la caracterización de tres grandes ciclos socioambientales en los que se generan condiciones para la instalación de grandes empresas transnacionales y “nacionales”. A su vez, se enfatiza en que lo que persiguen estas empresas es la generación y apropiación de renta de la tierra, un tipo específico de ganancia capitalista que requiere subordinar territorios, ecosistemas y población (...) humana para reproducirse. Señalamos que esta relación socioambiental es causante de precarizaciones, devastaciones y conflictividades sociales y ambientales en todo el país y argumentamos que, por lo mismo, forma parte de los sedimentos históricos que emergen desde el 18-O. Por último, se esbozan e indican algunas propuestas que permitirían orientarse a desmontar algunos de los procesos históricos, sociales y ambientales causantes de la crisis en curso. (shrink)

El marxismo ecológico es una de las corrientes de pensamiento crítico más prometedoras del presente. En las siguientes líneas exponemos algunas de sus características teóricas por medio de las tesis de Saito y Moore. Tras ello, introducimos abordajes más prácticos inclinados a hacer posible una transición ecosocial justa: nos apoyamos en la teoría de las necesidades (Madorrán) y en intervenciones con perspectiva de clase (Keucheyan, Huber). Concluimos poniendo de manifiesto ciertos presupuestos problemáticos de la teoría marxista a través de (...) los textos de Hornborg. (shrink)

When the existing order cannot offer a solution, the solution to climate crisis must come from the radical left, and this is precisely why Karl Marx’s idea of ecosocialism is more important than ever. In this context, it is worth revisiting not only the legacy of István Mészáros’s theory of ‘social metabolism’ and that of his successors – who can be categorised as comprising the ‘metabolic rift school’, which includes John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, and Brett Clark –, but (...) also Karl Marx’s own theory of metabolism. In order to highlight the contemporary importance of Marx’s theory of metabolism after its long suppression in the twentieth century, this paper aims at classifying the three different levels of Marx’s concept of ‘metabolic rift’, which also entails clarifying three different levels of ‘metabolic shift’ as the theoretical foundation for updating Marx’s theory of postcapitalism in the age of global ecological crisis. (shrink)

We know that law is a major enabler of the human activities that cause climate change, biodiversity destruction, and related ecosocial crises. We also turn to the law to regulate, mitigate, and attempt to transform these unsustainable human activities and systems. Yet, these regulatory regimes are often “recaptured” or “overridden” in turn by the very anthropogenic processes causing the crises. The resulting vicious cycles constitute the global trilemma of the twenty-first century that is rapidly rendering the living earth uninhabitable (...) for humans, in radically unequal ways, and for thousands of other species. Integral, non-violent, sustainable democratic constitutionalism is one modest, experimental, trial-and-error response to this trilemma. (shrink)

Topicality of the research topic. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an increase in the instability of the structure of ecosocial systems. Technological innovations have led to a sharp deterioration in natural social ecodynamics. The aim of the research is the conceptual modeling of the proliferation of biopolitics from the social sphere to the field of international relations with the subsequent transformation into a systemic factor of the global evolutionary process. Research methods and results. The model (...) is based on our previously proposed concept of a three-module stable evolutionary strategy of technogenic civilization. In relation to the triple spiral of anthropo-socio-technogenesis, i.e., the historical development of the cultural-ecological niche of Homo sapiens, constructed by him, this means the following. Periods of stable progressive growth of evolutionary and civilizational success are replaced by periods of various scales crisis, up to civilizational or even biological-evolutionary singularity. During the crisis, the importance of the political factor increases sharply, and over the past 50 years, this primarily relates to the field of biopolitics. The regional differentiation of the biopolitical sphere reconstruction during the fight against the pandemic will inevitably complicate international relations not only between regions that belong to different cultural and civilizational types. Probably less so, the same problems will affect the reconciliation of differences caused by geopolitical, interethnic, religious and even economic (competition) reasons. The first phase of the adaptive civilizational response is to reduce the degree of connection between the individual socio-cultural elements of modern civilization, i.e., slowing down the globalization process and intensifying interregional conflicts of various contents. In particular, such contradictions will be most acute in the post-Soviet geopolitical space, where the conditions of the civilizational rift are imposed on the conflicts of the transition period. Due to the specifics of modern high technologies, the process will enter the phase of global socio-techno-ecological self-developing systems reconstruction, which includes man as its element. And the obvious conclusion will be the transition of the development of biopolitical issues to a new, no longer international, but global-evolutionary level. In our understanding, transbiopolitics is a political issue related to the rationalization of the global evolutionary process. The latter will become a bearing element of the global process of evolution of the noosphere with the subsequent complication and increase of cohesion between separate sociocultural types which are a part of system of the modern globalizing civilization. (shrink)

Los autores presentan el nuevo enfoque que busca la integración de las ciencias de la naturaleza con las ciencias sociales y humanas. Destacan el surgimiento de las disciplinas híbridas y las nuevas propuestas epistemológicas y metodológicas, exponiendo en particular el surgimiento de la sociología ambiental y el tema de lo rural como referente empírico. Analizan el metabolismo entre la sociedad y la naturaleza, relevando la apropiación de la naturaleza como eje de lo rural mostrando su carácter multidimensional. Concluyen en la (...) necesidad de estudiar lo rural desde una perspectiva multidisciplinaria señalando que la crisis del mundo moderno que se experimenta dice relación con la transgresión de los límites biofísicos del planeta. (shrink)

This article argues that we need to learn from the living earth how living systems sustain themselves and use this knowledge to transform our unsustainable and destructive social systems into sustainable and symbiotic systems within systems. I first set out what I take to be four central features of sustainable living systems according to the life and earth sciences. Secondly, I set out what I take to be the main features of our unsustainable social system that cause damage to the (...) ecosphere on the one hand and give rise to the illusion of independence from it on the other hand. I then turn to several ways of responding to the sustainability crisis that are informed by this way of thinking about our interdependent relationship in and with ecosocial systems. These are ways of dis-engaging from our unsustainable practices, beginning to engage in practices of re-engaging and reconnecting socially and ecologically, and thus beginning to bring into being unalienated and sustainable ways of life on earth. If the symbiotic interdependency thesis of the first section is true, then participants in these connecting practices should be empowered in reciprocity by the interdependent relationships they connect with, and thus initiate expanding virtuous cycles. This reciprocal empowerment is discussed in the final section. (shrink)

Ahora más que nunca es necesario el resurgimiento del cosmopolitismo en la forma de una ética cosmopolita y global. Probablemente ésta sea la única vía para enfrentar la crisis ecosocial de dimensiones planetarias, causada por el acelerado desarrollo tecnocientífico, la violencia y la guerra sistemá..

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 4 Heft: 1-2 Seiten: 276-295.

ABSTRACT This study investigated the effect of conspiracy ideation, moral disengagement, and intolerance of uncertainty on compliance with the anti-SARS-COV-2 social distancing rules and two other facets of people’s reactions toward the coronavirus crisis. A convenience sample of 245 Romanians completed an online survey in March 2020. Results indicate that conspiracy ideation is associated with lower assessments of virus risk and lower compliance with the confinement measures. Moral disengagement had a parallel effect of undermining personal compliance to the social (...) distancing regulations, highlighting the need to define social distancing as morally relevant and prevent individual justifications for noncompliance. (shrink)

Global climate change has been characterised as the crisis of reason (Val Plumwood), imagination (Amitav Ghosh) and language (Elizabeth Rush), to mention some. The 'everything change', as Margaret Atwood calls it, arguably also impacts on how we aesthetically perceive, interpret and appreciate nature. This article looks at philosophical theories of nature appreciation against global environmental change. The article examines how human-induced global climate change affects the 'scientific' approaches to nature appreciation which base aesthetic judgment on scientific knowledge and the (...) competing 'non-scientific' approaches which emphasise the role of emotions, imagination and stories in the aesthetic understanding of environment. The author claims that both approaches are threatened by global climate change and cannot continue as usual. In particular, he explores aesthetic imagination in contemporary times when our visions about environment are thoroughly coloured by worry and uncertainty and there seems to be little room for awe and wonder, which have traditionally characterised the aesthetic experience of nature. Finally, he proposes that art could stimulate environmental imagining in this age of uncertainty. (shrink)

A timely, well-grounded analysis that reveals an inconvenient truth: we can't save capitalism and save the planet.

Argues that philosophy can solve the midlife crisis, at least in one of its forms. This crisis turns on the exhaustibility of our ends. The solution is to value ends that are ‘atelic,’ so inexhaustible. Topics include: John Stuart Mill's nervous breakdown; Aristotle on the finality of the highest good; and Schopenhauer on the futility of desire.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crisis of Meaning in Sartor Resartus—Thomas Carlyle's Pioneering Work in Articulating and Addressing the Existential ConfrontationFrank Martelawhat i call an "existential confrontation" is the encounter with the possibility that human life is absurd: created for no purpose and devoid of any lasting value or meaning. It is "the hour of terror at the world's vast meaningless grinding" that William James (Will to Believe 173) examines, described by Todd (...) May (xi) as "the confrontation of our need for meaning with the unwillingness of the Universe to yield it to us." This confrontation with the existential void and the potential absurdity of human existence is often not just an intellectual dilemma, but felt as a deep personal crisis accompanied by melancholia, angst, nausea, or even suicidal thoughts. Young William James confessed in a letter to a friend that "all last winter" he "was on the continual verge of suicide" (quoted in Gunnarsson), writing later that "too much questioning" leads "to the edge of the slope" wherein lies "nightmare or suicidal view of life" (James, "Is Life Worth Living?" 6). Similarly, Leo Tolstoy (54) reports how his inability to identify a lasting meaning of life drove him to a "state of lunacy" where "the best I could do was to hang myself."Despite a few earlier allusions—most famously the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaiming that "all is vanity and a striving after wind," and Shakespeare's Macbeth lamenting that life is "a tale told by an idiot … signifying nothing"—the existential confrontation is predominantly a modern phenomenon (Martela, A Wonderful Life). The modern history of descriptions of existential confrontations start at the turn of the nineteenth century, and includes Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death, Leo Tolstoy's A Confession, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Camus's Outsider, Sartre's Nausea, and T. S.Eliot's The Waste Land.There are many responses that the confrontation with the existential void has generated. Sartre embraced the lack of values imposed from outside and [End Page 80] emphasized human freedom. Human beings are "cast into this world … condemned to be free" without any "luminous realm of values" providing "justification or excuse," as Sartre famously summarized in "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (29). Other responses range from Søren Kierkegaard's leap of faith and William James's will to believe to Albert Camus's happiness from absurdity.While some of the responses end up finding a new way of connecting with God and faith, and others are explicitly atheistic, embracing the "death of God," a common thread in most responses is an acknowledgment of the situatedness of human experience and an emphasis placed on human subjectivity and the opportunity to live one's life more authentically. While existentialism, broadly conceived, is often seen as the central philosophical tradition dealing with the existential void, the confrontation was very much alive in the United States as well, visible in both literature and philosophy. As already alluded, William James had an existential confrontation in his youth, writing about the topic in "Is Life Worth Living" and other essays in Will to Believe. There has also been much back-and-forth between Europe and the United States around these themes, with the influences crossing the Atlantic on many occasions. For example, William James cites Thomas Carlyle in Will to Believe, while Sartre cites William James in Nausea, when discussing themes related to the existential confrontation. Similarly, Emerson inspired Nietzsche who inspired Josiah Royce. Typically, the histories tracing the early encounters with the existential confrontation acknowledge Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky as key nineteenth-century predecessors to Existentialism, as all faced directly the question of the meaning of life and the dreadful possibility that life might not have any meaning or value to it.However, there is a key author usually not mentioned in these histories, despite the fact that he played a pivotal role in introducing existentialist themes to the English-speaking audience, coining the phrase "meaning of life" in the English language. Thus, in writing the prehistory of Existentialism, we need to examine Thomas Carlyle and his Sartor Resartus, which has been described by literary historians as "one of... (shrink)

본 연구는 현대 사회의 인간성 위기를 주자의 심론에서 고찰하고자 한다. 인간성 위기의 원인을 주자의 이중적 심에서 찾아보았다. 또한 주자 심의 이중성을 후설이 주장한 의식의 이중성과 비교함으로써 현상학적 접근 방식을 시도하였다. 유학적 관점에서 인간성의 위기는 인간이 인욕에 빠져서 감춰진 도심을 망각했기 때문이라고 할 수 있다. 한편 근대 현상학자인 후설은 인간성의 위기를 심리학적 심에 가려진 초월적 심을 망각한 것에 있다고 보았다. 양자는 인간의 심을 이중성으로 규정한다는 측면에서 형식의 유사성을 보인다. 그리고 인간성의 위기를 주자의 도심과 후설의 초월적 심의 망각에서 찾고 있다는 것에서 내용적인 (...) 유사성을 찾을 수 있다.BR 인간의 심은 주자에서 인심과 도심으로, 후설에서는 심리학적 의식과 초월적 의식의 이중적인 것이다. 주자는 도심을 회복하는 방법으로 격물치지를, 후설은 현상학적 판단중지를 통한 환원을 주장한다. 인간성의 위기가 도심의 망각에서 기인한 것이라면 도심을 찾아서 내면으로 회복하는 것은 비인간화를 막는 방안이 될 수 있을 것이다. 이런 방식으로 인간성 위기의 극복은 현실의 인심에서 내재된 도심으로의 환원에 기대를 가질 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

In order to gain greater insight into the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) during a time of crisis, the study examines the commitment of firms to continue to engage in CSR activity despite financial pressures to divert their slack resources elsewhere. The setting of the study is CSR activity during the perhaps unprecedented global crisis associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a qualitative research method approach, both a variety of media sources and the relevant academic literature (...) are reviewed in order to identify examples of CSR activity related specifically to COVID-19. The examples are then categorized and situated according to Professor Archie Carroll’s well-known CSR Pyramid framework describing the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic domains of CSR. As such, this study is the first to extend the rich literature stream utilizing Carroll’s CSR Pyramid within the unique context of a global pandemic. (shrink)

This article maps and analyzes quantitatively how the Scandinavian news press covered the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. Our analysis shows that in the coverage of the migration events, Denmark and Sweden occupy polar positions in terms of their newspapers’ emphasis, with the former appearing more negative towards the refugees, and the latter more positive. The Norwegian case is found in between these. Danish print media more often mention the negative economic consequences of the arrivals, and Swedish the positive moral (...) ones, while Norway appears to occupy a middle ground in the Scandinavian discourse. We also find that the Scandinavian press writes less often about the negative consequences of refugees coming than the European press in general. However, the humanitarian aspects of the crisis became less prominent in the Scandinavian press over time, as in the rest of Europe. (shrink)

ExcerptDemocracy of opinion? Television democracy? Market democracy? Whether one studies them in the context of the crisis or evaluates them in relation to the dynamic of postmodernism, the pathologies affecting contemporary democracies are attracting more and more attention. The general opinion is that these pathologies, far from being inherent to democracy itself, are the result of a corruption of its principles. The most superficial observers attribute this corruption to external factors or phenomena (hence the ritualistic denunciations of fundamentalism, populism, (...) communitarianism, globalization, etc.), which amounts to questioning solely the changes in morals and the transformation of society. Yet this confuses…. (shrink)

Yarkoni has argued that psychology is facing a generalizability crisis, but the real cost of this crisis is obscured by a focus on topics from psychology's most academic subfields. Psychology is also filled with applied subfields, and it is within those subfields – especially clinical science – where the cost of a generalizability crisis will be most severe.

: In his autobiographical account, the Munqidh min al-Dalāl, al-Ghazālī reflects on his conversion from skepticism to faith. Previous scholarship has interpreted this text as an anticipation of Cartesian positions regarding epistemic certainty. Although the existing similarities between al-Ghazālī and Descartes are striking, the focus of the present essay lies on the different philosophical aims pursued by the two thinkers. It is thus argued that al-Ghazālī operates with a broader notion of the Self than Descartes, because it is inclusive of (...) the body. And it is shown that the two philosophers use completely diverging paradigms. While Descartes models his notion of evidence after mathematical certainty, al-Ghazālī draws his famous 'ilm al-yaqīnī (certain knowledge) from a religious context. (shrink)

This case study examines five dimensions of the 2007–2009 financial crisis in the United States: the devastating effects of the financial crisis on the U.S. economy, including unparalleled unemployment, massive declines in gross domestic product, and the prolonged mortgage foreclosure crisis; the multiple causes of the financial crisis and panic, such as the housing and bond bubbles, excessive leverage, lax financial regulation, disgraceful banking practices, and abysmal rating agency performance; the extraordinary efforts of the Federal Reserve, (...) the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Department of the Treasury to stem the financial freefall triggered by the crisis and resuscitate financial institutions, the ethical implications of the unprecedented actions by government institutions to rescue financial institutions and drag the country back from the brink of global financial collapse, and the conduct of the various parties contributing to the financial crisis, such as the shoddy behavior of mortgage brokers, the massive securitization of mortgages into overly complex bonds, the excessive leverage of financial institutions, the disgraceful work of bond rating firms, the abysmal risk management systems employed by financial institutions, and the massive operations of the shadow banking and over-the-counter derivatives markets; and the major provisions of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law to in response to the financial crisis and for the purpose of correcting the egregious conduct of major financial institutions. (shrink)

The coming to office of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil has brought to the fore the need to understand the rise of the far right and to come to terms with the conflicted legacies of more than a decade of rule under the Workers’ Party. This forum brings together six leading intellectuals from different traditions on the left and introduces their reflections on the contradictions and complexities of the Workers’ Party, the 2008 crisis, the June 2013 protests, the weakness of (...) the Brazilian left, corruption, and on how to characterise Bolsonaro’s regime. Their interventions offer crucial insights that are relevant today not just to Brazil, or even Latin America, but to the politics of the left worldwide. (shrink)

An ongoing crisis in Australian agriculture resulting from climate crises including drought, decreasing irrigation water, more recent catastrophic flooding, and an uncertain policy environment is reshaping gender relations in the intimate sphere of the farm family. Drawing on research conducted in the Murray-Darling Basin area of Australia we ask the question: Does extreme hardship/climate crises change highly inequitable gender relations in agriculture? As farm income declines, Australian farm women are more likely to be working off farm for critical family (...) income while men continue to work on farm often in circumstances of damaged landscapes, rising debt, and limited production. This paper examines the way gender relations are being renegotiated in a time of significant climate crisis. Our research suggests that climate crises have indeed led to changes in gender relations and that some changes are unexpected. Whereas one would logically assume that women’s enhanced economic contribution would increase their power in gender negotiations, we argue that this does not necessarily occur because their contribution is viewed as a farm survival strategy. Men are committed to prioritizing the farm and view women’s income generating work as critical to this purpose and yet, paradoxically, long for a return to traditional farm roles. We find that women are actively resisting traditional gender relations by reshaping a role for themselves beyond the farm—in the process moving physically and mentally away from a farm family ideology, questioning gender inequalities, and by extension their relationships. (shrink)

According to Val Plumwood (1995), liberal-democracy is an authoritarian political system that protects privilege but fails to protect nature. A major obstacle, she says, is radical inequality, which has become increasingly far-reaching under liberal-democracy; an indicator of ‘the capacity of its privileged groups to distribute social goods upwards and to create rigidities which hinder the democratic correctiveness of social institutions’ (p. 134). This cautionary tale has repercussions for education, especially civics and citizenship education. To address this, we explore the potential (...) of what Gerard Delanty calls ‘cultural citizenship’ as an alternative to the disciplinary citizenship that permeates Western liberal discourse. Cultural citizenship emphasises citizenship as communication and continual learning processes, rejecting the idea of citizenship as a fixed set of cultural ideals, norms or values defined and enforced by liberal society’s legal, political and cultural institutions, including education and ‘citizenship training’. However, we contend that a critical first step, essential to democratic correctiveness, is to clear away obstacles created by the privileging of a dominant epistemic position. We conclude that Plumwood’s philosophy alongside John Dewey’s work on democracy and education provide a theoretical framework for effective democratic inquiry aimed towards interconnective, deliberative practice and corrective methodology for epistemic accountability. (shrink)

The concept of the ‘infodemic’ has become a popular explanation for the rejection of anti-COVID-19 crisis governance measures. In this paper, we argue that infodemic is an inherent property of society under free institutions misused to pursue an epistemically vicious political epistemology. Furthermore, we provide an alternative account of political epistemology of COVID-19 governance and popular resistance to it. Namely, we argue that 1) pandemics represent a complex problem, and some level of resistance to governance which restricts liberties while (...) informed by ongoing scientific and political learning processes is inevitable, and 2) the resistance is exacerbated by the history of technocratization of governance and the exclusionary socio-economic inequalities which condition political and epistemic deficiencies easily exploitable by the political entrepreneurs of right-wing populism, particularly under the conditions of social media which gamifies public discourse. Thus, we argue, the correct response to the cultures of rejection of anti-COVID-19 measures is to change the underlying political and economic conditions and not to limit speech or restrict franchise as the infodemic diagnosis suggests. (shrink)

Develops a framework using resources from Rawls and Nagel for understanding injustices due to the sale of defective real estate instruments by banks whose solvency was globally important in 2007-2008. The leaderships of some of these banks were partly responsible for the world financial crisis that started in 2008.

The paper has two complementary objectives. First, it sustains an analysis of the concept of ‘coloniality’ that accounts for the epistemic imbalance in the modern world, demonstrating precisely how Africa is adversely affected, having been caught up in the throes of coloniality and its epistemic implications. Second – and complementarily – the paper attempts to bring this very concept of ‘coloniality’ into the discourse on Africa’s emigration crisis, arguing that Africa’s emigration crisis is traceable, inter alia, to the (...) epistemic imbalance in the very structure of modernity. This imbalance results from the stifling of Africa’s epistemic resources under Western epistemic hegemony. Epistemic coloniality, of course interacting with some material factors, creates a sufficient condition for emigration. It is further theorized that the apparent lack of epistemic will on the part of Africans to mobilize some surviving epistemic resources to address some problems on their own is also a function of coloniality. (shrink)

COVID-19 is reducing the ability to perform surgical procedures worldwide, giving rise to a multitude of ethical, practical and medical dilemmas. Adapting to crisis conditions requires a rethink of traditional best practices in surgical management, delving into an area of unknown risk profiles. Key challenging areas include cancelling elective operations, modifying procedures to adapt local services and updating the consenting process. We aim to provide an ethical rationale to support change in practice and guide future decision-making. Using the four (...) principles approach as a structure, Medline was searched for existing ethical frameworks aimed at resolving conflicting moral duties. Where insufficient data were available, best guidance was sought from educational institutions: National Health Service England and The Royal College of Surgeons. Multiple papers presenting high-quality, reasoned, ethical theory and practice guidance were collected. Using this as a basis to assess current practice, multiple requirements were generated to ensure preservation of ethical integrity when making management decisions. Careful consideration of ethical principles must guide production of local guidance ensuring consistent patient selection thus preserving equality as well as quality of clinical services. A critical issue is balancing the benefit of surgery against the unknown risk of developing COVID-19 and its associated complications. As such, the need for surgery must be sufficiently pressing to proceed with conventional or non-conventional operative management; otherwise, delaying intervention is justified. For delayed operations, it is our duty to quantify the long-term impact on patients’ outcome within the constraints of pandemic management and its long-term outlook. (shrink)

This article attempts to understand the philosophical significance of Lenin’s work, Materialism and Empiriocriticism, by putting it in the historical perspective and context of the theoretical debates of the time. The author argues that Lenin’s decision to engage in philosophical discussion was motivated by the need to respond to the growing struggles of Marxism, and specifically to the dangerous consequences of positivism that spread to Russia, which thereby led to a crisis in theory and political practice. Lenin’s work is (...) the first philosophical assault on positivism, and most notably on its specific form, Machism, which he criticizes from the position of dialectical materialism. Recognizing the damaging effects of the positivistic position for Marxism, Lenin attacks Alexander Bogdanov’s Empiriomonism as a form of Machism which undermines the materialistic foundation of Marxist philosophy. (shrink)

Moral entrepreneurship is the fine art of recycling evil into good by taking advantage of situations given or constructed as crises. It should be seen as the ultimate generalisation of the entrepreneurial spirit, whose peculiar excesses have always sat uneasily with homo oeconomicus as the constrained utility maximiser, an image that itself has come to be universalised. A task of this essay is to reconcile the two images in terms of what by the end I call ‘superutilitarianism’, which draws on (...) the lore of both superheroes and utilitarianism. After briefly surveying the careers of three exemplars of the moral entrepreneur (Robert McNamara, George Soros and Jeffrey Sachs), I explore the motives of moral entrepreneurs in terms of their standing debt to society for having already caused unnecessary harm but which also now equips him with the skill set needed to do significant good. Such a mindset involves imagining oneself a vehicle of divine will, which would be a scary proposition had it not been long presumed by Christians touched by Calvin. In conclusion, I argue that moral entrepreneurship looks most palatable – and perhaps even attractive – if the world is ‘reversible’, in the sense that every crisis, however clumsily handled by the moral entrepreneur, causes people to distinguish more clearly the necessary from contingent features of their existence. This leads them to reconceptualise past damages as new opportunities to assert what really matters; hence, a ‘superutilitarian’ ethic that treats all suffering as less cost than investment in a greater sense of the good. (shrink)

The moral value of health : health as a basic human need -- The human right to health and its corresponding responsibilities -- States and natural persons as subjects of justice -- Pharmaceutical transnational corporations as subjects of justice -- The global health governance of the global health crisis.

Se plantea en este ensayo la discutida posición de Sócrates acerca de las leyes de Atenas: tanto la ley democrática y positiva, como la ley tradicional no-escrita. Se argumenta sobre las fuentes que tenemos, especialmente la Apología y el Critón de Platón, y los Memorabilia de Jenofonte. Se concluye que Sócrates no dejó nunca, a lo largo de su dilatada existencia, de intentar persuadir sobre la justicia, sosteniendo que, bajo ningún concepto, era justo hacer daño, ni incumplir las leyes o (...) las órdenes de la autoridad superior (humana o divina). (shrink)

This essay argues that we have a duty to protect biodiversity hotspots, rooted in an argument about the wrongful imposition of risk and intergenerational justice. State authority over territory and resources is not unlimited; the state has a duty to protect these areas. The essay argues that although biodiversity loss is a global problem, it can be tackled at the domestic level through clear rules. The argument thus challenges the usual view of state sovereignty, which holds that authority over territory, (...) resources, and migration (all of which are connected to the protection of biodiversity hotspots) is unlimited. (shrink)

This paper examines philosophy as a way of life in a time of crisis by focusing on Buddhism, envisioned as a path exercising the faculty of “mindfulness.” From this standpoint of “Buddhist philosophy as mindful exercise,” and following the Kyōto School’s inspiration of engaging a dialogue with Western traditions, including modern psychology and medicine, the paper reflects upon the role of philosophy during this critical period. In response to the contemporary fragmentation of knowledge, it conceives creatively a set of (...) core principles in the form of maxims – to be examined and adapted by each potentially interested individual – as tools to retain vital information, organize reflection, and reorient one’s attention and destiny. Structured according to the Buddhist categories of view, meditation, and conduct, this collection of maxims serves to articulate the organic movement that goes back and forth between the distinctions made in philosophical discourse and the unity of lived philosophy. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the crisis of the modern philosophy caused by the generally accepted approach towards the ontology issues of existence and the ways to solve these problems. Before Kant’s theory the fundamental principle of the universe organization in the ontology was the determination of the existence as the number of objects that were independent from the subject and explored as they were. Kant showed then that the subject deals only with the images of its own conscience. (...) The existence became not the thing-in-itself, but the thing, that opens to the human mind. But this experience gave no answer to the question about the differences between the immanent perceptions of conscience and the universe itself. This article reveals that the transition from the understanding of things as independent existing objects toward the understanding of their subjective origin as objects themselves demands more radical conclusions. These conclusions consist of that fact that the ontology should concentrate more exploring existence as the unformed organic whole and not to forget about its general problemsand presentations about the conscience. Currently we can get non-verbal knowledge about the existence itself and take steps of getting verbal one. Separation of the existence as the unformed organic whole from the presentations of conscience prevents from mistake of determining the things created by the subject in the process of universe perception as its attributes (the plurality of interpretations turns into the ontology pluralism). (shrink)

The aim of this article is to identify the main factors of the current crisis of the nation-state and to demonstrate how many of the voids left by this crisis are filled by religions. The main characteristic of the nation-state is the principle of sovereignty. The apogee of the nation-state is the political form of industrialization. National identity is possible only when the state proves to its citizens that the fact of being a member of it carries benefits (...) and privileges and will always bring more. Today, the majority of nation-states, in particular the oldest great powers, no longer have this capability. The weakening of the nation-state began at the end of the 19th century. The first wave of globalization multiplied the cases of reciprocal interferences and trespassed on the theoretical impermeability of the sovereign states. The outcome of the First World War, with the creation of the first supranational body, and much more the outcome of the Second World War, were two important steps of this crisis. The birth of the United Nations, and of other supranational bodies, as well as the creation of the first court called to judge an entire political class, were an assault on the principle of sovereignty. The second wave of globalization, characterized by the free circulation of goods, money, people and cultures, did the rest. Moreover, the countries that ‘invented’ the principle of sovereignty are today in relative decline as new powers are emerging. The nation-state is no longer able to keep its promises. The less effective states become at offering their citizens both meaning and social services, the more do religions tend to reoccupy the public stage. The less national and political legitimacy they have, the more powers use the religious tool against one another. (shrink)