The Original Truth of Understanding and Taking Action: Gadamer on Plurality and Solidarity

Chapter 7 considers whether and how ethnic and ethno-religious identities may influence the likelihood of reporting food insecurity, as well as the broader lived experience of food, poverty and food aid use. It focuses on women with young children at a local level, but also draws upon data collected at a national level, where available. It explicates the varying political and ethical frameworks that may underpin lived experiences of food in contexts of poverty – neoliberal ethics of independence, hospitality informed by Islam, and mutual aid – arguing that, in some marginalised communities mutual aid is the predominant ethical system. It closes by exploring in depth possibilities for mutual aid in food charity, highlighting the progressive ethical and political frameworks, celebrating interdependence and fostering resistance to neoliberal norms, that underpin some food charities.

Philosophical practice applies philosophical insights and methods to help individuals explore and resolve intellectual, emotional, and existential dilemmas, enhancing self-understanding and mental well-being. This study employs CiteSpace to analyze global research trends and hotspots in philosophical practice using data from the Web of Science (WOS) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases spanning from 2000 to 2024. By identifying key methodologies and applications, the study compares the development of philosophical practice in Western and Chinese contexts across theoretical culture, practical application, social impact, and professional development. The findings reveal that Western philosophical practice, rooted in ancient Greek philosophy and modern streams like existentialism and analytic philosophy, emphasizes individual autonomy, critical thinking, and personal growth. In contrast, Chinese philosophical practice draws from Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, focusing on harmony between the individual and society, moral cultivation, and social cohesion. Despite these differences, both traditions share common goals of enhancing self-awareness, addressing ethical dilemmas, and improving mental health through philosophical dialogue. The study highlights the potential for integrating Chinese and Western philosophical practice, suggesting that a fusion of methodologies and ethical frameworks can provide a more holistic and culturally sensitive approach. This integration offers new perspectives for global philosophical dialogue, interdisciplinary collaboration, and practical applications in addressing contemporary challenges.

The ethics of material provisioning: Insiders’ views of work in the extractive industries

For some three decades now American historians have produced considerable new work in social history. Yet one has difficulty identifying emerging conceptual and theoretical tendencies which arise from it. In a recent review of work over the past decade, much of which concerned social history, the editors found it appropriate to stress the virtues of diversity in that scholarship rather than to identify lines of theoretical development. While they lament the balkanization of American history which has occurred, they find in the articles under review little of an integrative quality which commands attention.' Writing about political history is somewhat better. Studies of popular voting have given rise to a scheme of six periods of party over the past two centuries. Legislative analyses have identified partisanship as the persistent theme of legislative action, which displayed signs of weakening only in the mid-twentieth century. Yet even here one would hope for a more extended set of integrative concepts. Both popular voting and legislative studies are increasingly drawn in upon themselves, undertaking ever finer analyses of voting behavior and the internal workings of institutions. The frequent assertion that legislatures reflect tendencies within the broader society has hardly led to detectable attempts to establish such links.2 In both social and political history the most significant theoretical potential lies in the connection that can be drawn between society and politics, between social change and the larger realms of public choice. But neither brand of history has moved very far in that direction. Social history has remained rather markedly aloof from constructing theory that would link its detailed studies with a larger social and political framework; and political history tends to gravitate toward assertions of the significance of the internal dynamics of formal political institutions, such as parties and administrative systems themselves.3 The potential

It can be sensibly argued that transformations of social, political and moral frameworks for constructing personal and political subjectivities have been taking place in a variety of forms and with different effects across a range of Eastern European contexts. In order to understand and describe individual experiences of social change, researchers have usually engaged in documenting the nature of these particular transformations of social, political and moral frameworks for constructing personal and political subjectivities. Although this is a very important research goal in its own right, it may not tell the whole story. Questions still remain: How are these social, political and moral frameworks constructed by members of society through the use of various cultural and discursive resources to make sense of themselves and others? How are personal and political subjectivities actually constructed and reproduced, assumed or contested?

This introductory chapter provides the context for Cultures of Decolonisation by offering a theoretical framework for analysing the ‘end of empire’. It sets out the value of using the lens of culture, broadly understood, to explore the processes of decolonisation. Here, we argue that cultural products and sites provide a productive arena for engaging with the complexities of decolonisation as lived beyond ‘flag independence’ and constitutional reform, and that object and spatial form are active agents in the discourses of independence, nationalism, decolonisation and neo-colonialism. Diverse cultures, shaped through and contributing to ideologies of modernism, development, internationalism, reframing notions of the universal and the specific, and engaging with questions of knowledge, epistemology and expertise, were crucial in the remaking of the geopolitical landscape in the mid-twentieth century. Material culture, social spaces, and creative arenas, from the museum to the internet chat room, Royal Mint and dictionary, are highlighted as sites for commentary and reflection, activism and articulation, and the celebration and negotiation of decolonisation. Having established the importance of image, object, text and practice in thinking through decolonisation, a series of claims about the nature of decolonisation are made: first, we argue for the need to redraw Eurocentric historiographies of decolonisation and highlight the activities and agency of decolonising and newly independent nations and individuals within and alongside analyses of metropolitan cultures of decolonisation. Second, we argue for the transnational and international nature of decolonisation, highlighting movements and networks – of people, ideas and things – between places and across borders, emphasising instances of solidarity and cross-fertilisation amongst individuals and communities, and the role that the cultural realm had in facilitating these exchanges beyond the high politics of empire. The role of the individual actor (working in tandem with the designed and natural world, and political and cultural frameworks) is particularly emphasised. In acknowledging the impact of the so-called periphery on decolonisation in this way, parallel assumptions about the origins of modernism and modernity are also contested. Finally, it is argued that we must pay attention to the shifting and non-linear temporalities of decolonisation. It is in the cultures of decolonisation that we can see more clearly the pre-histories, continuing legacies, resurgences, and contradictory trajectories of this phenomenon.

Two theories on the origins of COVID-19 have been widely circulating in China and the West respectively, one blaming the United States and the other a highest-level biocontainment laboratory in Wuhan, the initial epicentre of the pandemic. Both theories make claims of biological warfare attempts. According to the available scientific evidence, these claims are groundless. However, like the episodes of biological warfare during the mid-twentieth century, the spread of these present-day conspiracy theories reflects a series of longstanding and damaging trends in the international scene which include deep mistrust, animosities, the power of ideologies such as nationalism, and the sacrifice of truth in propaganda campaigns. Also, the threats associated with biological warfare, bioterrorism, and the accidental leakage of deadly viruses from labs are real and growing. Thus, developing a better global governance of biosafety and biosecurity than exists at present is an urgent imperative for the international community in the broader context of a looming Cold War II. For such a governance, an ethical framework is proposed based upon the triple ethical values of transparency, trust, and the common good of humanity.

Reviewed by: Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism by Mark R. Stoll Joseph Witt Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. By Mark R. Stoll. (New York and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi, 406. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-19-023086-9.) The connection between religions and environmental attitudes and behaviors has been a subject of increasing scholarly interest since the mid-twentieth century, inspiring a multitude of interdisciplinary publications, conferences, and even a new field of religion and ecology. With Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism, Mark R. Stoll has made a substantial contribution to this field by charting the influence of Calvinist theology on the development of environmentalism and conservationist policies in the United States. Shifting focus away from commonly cited innovators such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Stoll describes how the worldviews and motivations of North American environmentalists emerged within relatively mainstream and conventional Protestant communities. The result is a thorough and engaging work that should inspire discussion and debate among scholars and students of environmental history, religious history, and the environmental humanities. Stoll’s central argument is that Calvinism, “from its moralism to its suspicion of humans in the landscape to its urgent evangelism,” directly shaped [End Page 197] the development of North American environmentalism, imbuing the movement with “tremendous social, cultural, and political power” (p. 53). The environmental movement originated among elite New England Puritans and Congregationalists who established an “enduring intellectual and moral framework” through their efforts to preserve the aesthetic and moral well-being of their communities (p. 61). Calvinist influence on environmental policy reached its zenith in the early twentieth century when the Presbyterian denomination was at its strongest and its members held a number of influential political offices. Stoll charts this thread of religious influence through the lived motivations and perspectives of artistic, literary, and scientific leaders. Puritan concerns for the aesthetic and moral common good, for example, are manifested through the works of popular nineteenth-century landscape painters, and the Presbyterian “determination to conquer avarice and save society” was evident in the popular writings of John Muir and other environ-mentalist leaders (p. 151). Many of the central figures of Stoll’s text are thus authors and writers rather than religious leaders, and as the author acknowledges, “A big segment of my argument is art-historical” (p. 4). Following the end of the Progressive era, the influence of Presbyterians on politics and conservation policies began to wane, and the environmental movement likewise changed course. Growing in influence through the twentieth century, Baptists and evangelicals tended to eschew the nature-revering spirituality of figures like Muir and emphasize individual salvation over the preservation of a common good. In the final chapter, “A New Era,” Stoll describes how African Americans, Catholics, and Jews brought new perspectives into the environmental movement in the twentieth century. These groups focused on issues of environmental justice rather than on preserving pristine tracts of wilderness from human development. While Stoll celebrates the increased scope and inclusivism of North American environmentalism, he also suggests that the contemporary environmental movement seems to have lost influence due to these shifts in underlying religious motivation, failing to sufficiently critique the rampant individualism of the current age. Stoll concludes, “If it is not dead yet, environmentalism is certainly weak, divided, and wandering in the wilderness” (p. 275). It becomes clear through Inherit the Holy Mountain that specific religious values and environmental attitudes have mutually influenced each other in some complex way through North American history. Stoll’s evidence shows that many early environmentalist leaders in the United States shared similar Calvinist personal histories and frequently spoke a common Calvinist-toned language of conservation for the public good. However, Stoll’s own data suggests some qualifications to his central thesis. Along with Calvinist connections, for example, elite social connections seem prevalent among many of the figures Stoll describes. Does this suggest that social and economic conditions played a more significant role in the development of environmentalism, particularly the movement for wilderness preservation, with religious identity merely being epiphenomenal? Stoll’s volume is a...

The digital revolution, which led to the early days of internet, peer-to-peer sharing, and cryptocurrencies, illustrated how novel technologies can be ahead of ethical and political rules and principles. Anno 2018, a similar anarchic political framework is prevalent within the emerging field of biotechnology [1]. To ensure the broadest participation, an equitable distribution of resources, and democratization of this technology, the objective of this workshop is to explore opportunities for Participatory Design (PD) principles to be introduced into the field of synthetic biology. Simultaneously, we provide methodologies for designers, artists, engineers, scientists who aim to or already engage with biotechnologies, to integrate inclusive, political and ethical frameworks into their work.

Transplantation: a complex procedure supported by a strong legislative and ethical framework

Fanaticism presents one of the most important political problems of our times. Yet contemporary democratic theory has had surprisingly little to say about it because it is overwhelmingly concerned with conflict that takes place within a liberal ethical and political framework. It largely ignores conflict between competing frameworks, which is precisely the terrain on which fanaticism appears. The political thought of the abolitionist fanatic Wendell Phillips deepens democratic theory by showing that fanaticism is an approach to politics that seeks to establish hegemony in a struggle between competing ethico-political frameworks, an approach that can sometimes expand democracy rather than threaten it. The lesson of Phillips is that there can be democratic potential in the fanatical encouragement of intractable conflict.

This paper investigates how emotion functions as an interface in artificial intelligence (AI)-mediated communication systems, with a critical focus on the cultural politics embedded in synthetic empathy. Drawing from affect theory, critical communication studies, and posthumanist perspectives, the study employs a qualitative, discourse-analytical approach to examine how emotional responsiveness is simulated, packaged, and operationalized in human-machine interactions. Empirical cases include AI-powered therapeutic bots, emotionally adaptive voice assistants, and automated customer service agents. The analysis reveals that synthetic empathy, rather than reflecting genuine emotional understanding, primarily serves as a mechanism for behavioral optimization aligned with neoliberal market logics. Emotion, when coded into technological interfaces, becomes a regulatory tool—modulating user engagement while concealing asymmetries in care, power, and agency. Furthermore, the cultural scripting of empathy in AI systems tends to reproduce dominant affective norms, marginalize non-normative emotional expressions, and depoliticize the labor of care, thus reinforcing structural inequities under the guise of affective neutrality. The contribution of this paper lies in its critical interrogation of emotional design as a site of power negotiation in digital systems, highlighting how affective interfaces participate in broader sociotechnical processes of commodification and control. By situating synthetic empathy within cultural, ethical, and political frameworks, the study offers a novel theoretical lens for understanding the implications of emotional AI. It calls for a reimagining of emotional mediation in AI that prioritizes cultural specificity, relational ethics, and the recognition of human vulnerability—thereby contributing to the development of more just and accountable communicative technologies in the digital age.

The purpose of this contribution is to show the way in which confronting theories of justice and democracy with the question of disability constrains the former to reconsider their contractarian groundings and to build up a frame that takes into account the effective situation of the most vulnerable persons. In this perspective, the approach through capabilities, while it does appear as an advance in the taking into considerations the situation of these persons and their specific capacity, requires nevertheless a futher radicalization of this consideration and analysis, as well as, the construction of an ethical and political framework that could take account of the required conditions for an effective participation of the disabled persons in the definition of their individual and collective project.

This study assesses the impact of accountability, the status quo, and anticipated costs and benefits on judgement of the acceptability of a drug in the US pharmaceuticals market. Several effects are documented: (1) subjects were more accepting of a drug, the lower the anticipated risks of side effects and the greater the anticipated benefits; (2) subjects were especially unwilling to accept risk when the drug was not yet on the market and when they felt accountable for their decisions; (3) accountable subjects confronted by an off‐the‐market drug that posed moderate or high risk were also especially likely to procrastinate, to buckpass, and to think in integratively complex ways about the problem, notwithstanding the fact that many more lives would be saved than lost. We explain these results by positing that perceptual‐cognitive processes (loss aversion) and political processes (blame avoidance) mutually reinforce each other when decision makers are accountable for choices that raise the possibility of changing the status quo in ways that impose losses on identifiable constituencies. We conclude by commenting on the complex normative issues that arise in labelling response tendencies as biases. Choices that look irrational within one ethical or political framework sometimes appear quite reasonable with another.

Chapter 15 - Ethics and Institutional Review Board Capacity Building