Contemporary Ethics Research Articles

Daoist and Confucianist Schools of Thought in Muslim-Majority Indonesian Society

Confucianism is a school of thought that was born in China in the sixth century BC, founded by Confucius. This teaching emphasizes moral virtue, social relationships, and the connection between man and Heaven. The aim of this article is to explore the evolution of Confucianism from its early teachings to its more complex form of Neo-Confucianism, as well as its relevance in the modern context in China and East Asia. The methods used in this article involve a historical and philosophical approach through textual analysis of the teachings of Dao and Confucius, including the works of Zhu Xi, as well as a comparative study of its influence on culture, society, and politics in East Asia. The results of the analysis show that although Confucianism suffered a decline during the period of division after the fall of the Han Dynasty, its rise through Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty era not only integrated metaphysical and spiritual elements but also strengthened education and self-development as the foundation of morality. In addition, the article reveals how Daoism and Confucianism have successfully adapted to modern challenges, such as interaction with Western thought and far-reaching social changes so that it remains relevant in shaping contemporary culture and ethics in East Asia.

應該不只有一種公共健康倫理

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. Professor Cong Yali’s paper precisely describes the central contradiction in contemporary public health ethics, which is related to the difference between individual liberalism and communitarianism. However, it fails to critique the root cause of this contradiction—the modernity that is the basis of public health’s construction. From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy, it is possible to develop a cognitive approach to human public health that is entirely distinct from modernity, thereby providing a more robust justification for the ‘publicness’ of public health ethics.

Business Ethics in Practice: A Systematic Evaluation of Ethical Frameworks Through WSM Methodology

This study examines various approaches to business ethics through the application of the Weighted Sum Model (WSM) method, evaluating different ethical frameworks across four critical dimensions: stakeholder impact, ethical consistency, cultural sensitivity, and sustainability. The research analyses five distinct approaches: Utilitarian, Deontological, Limited Liability Company, and two variations of Justice and Fairness approaches. Using normalized data and equal weightage distribution (0.25) across all dimensions, the study implements a systematic evaluation framework to assess the relative effectiveness of each ethical approach. The findings reveal a clear hierarchical preference among the approaches, with the Limited Liability Company model achieving the highest preference score (0.64887), followed by the Deontological Approach (0.58813), and the Justice and Fairness Approach (0.58261). Notable variations were observed in dimensional performance, with the Utilitarian Approach excelling in cultural sensitivity (1.00000), while the Deontological Approach demonstrated superior performance in both ethical consistency and sustainability (1.00000). The Limited Liability Company structure showed particular strength in stakeholder impact (1.00000). The research employs a comprehensive analytical framework incorporating normalized data matrices and weighted assessments to ensure objective evaluation. This methodological approach provides a robust foundation for comparing diverse ethical frameworks while maintaining consistency in assessment criteria. The study's results offer valuable insights for organizations seeking to develop or enhance their ethical frameworks, suggesting that a hybrid approach incorporating elements from multiple frameworks might be most effective in addressing contemporary business ethics challenges.

Playing with Virtue: Exploring Musical Expertise Through Julia Annas’s Lens

ABSTRACT In contemporary virtue ethics, virtues are often assimilated to skills. This assimilation suggests that the moral knowledge of virtuous individuals parallels the practical knowledge of experts in a particular skill. According to Julia Annas (2011a, 2011b), virtues function as skills requiring the ability to articulate reasons for one’s actions. These skills are developed through habitual practice over time. For example, a pianist who internalizes piano techniques possesses practical expertise akin to someone who understands their actions, even when performed automatically. Annas argues that to cultivate ethical virtue, we should emulate musical action, viewing it as a habit rather than mere repetition. This analogy aids in understanding virtue acquisition as practical skill-building. Expanding on Annas’s insights, this article contends that musical practice offers profound ethical implications for musicians as potential moral agents. Supported by important neurological and psychological studies on musical expertise, as well as the dynamics of classical music interpretation and professional career development, this argument sheds light on the ethical dimensions of musical agency. These insights into musical expertise could enhance our understanding of ethical expertise overall.

New Aspects of Hobbes – Matter and Energy: Remarks on Samantha Frost’s Lessons from a Materialist Thinker

Abstract A symposium on Samantha Frost’s Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics offers an opportunity to revisit one of the most original contributions to Hobbes scholarship in the last few decades. The book’s originality resides not only in recuperating Hobbes’s materialist metaphysics for contemporary ethics and politics, but in making Hobbes’s take on matter inform novel conceptual approaches to social and non-social reality, such as new materialism – a philosophical school that conceives matter as vibrant and agentic, rather than inert.

Cultural Politics and Academic Crises in American Campus Fiction – Francine Prose’s Blue Angel and Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons

Abstract The article starts from the implications of a phrase in the first chapter of Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain, a book that addresses issues of contemporary morality in the closed environment of the American academia: “Everyone knows.” Written in the aftermath of the Clinton-Lewinski scandal, Roth’s novel and the two books this article discusses reveal dual, often deliberately ambiguous depictions of gender and power dynamics in the ecosystem of the American college campus, a space that widens the gap between social structures, which grow more and more granular. The examined novels share concerns about cultural politics, offering a complementary perspective: while Francine Prose’s novel follows the tradition of the campus novel and retells the story from a mature academic’s point of view, Tom Wolfe’s book shifts to a young student’s side of the story. The article aims to demonstrate it is not a mere coincidence that these representative novels about social and moral crises faced on the campus were actually written in a time when campus fiction was also going through an aesthetic crisis. The crises on the campus and the crisis in campus fiction indicate a turning point, where creative solutions can be identified, despite their potential controversy.

La relación hombre-naturaleza como fundamento de la responsabilidad ambiental

Environmental responsibility has been analyzed since the mid-20th century, establishing its foundation in the disruption of the relationship between humans and nature. The urgency of these evaluations is a consequence of the negative impacts that human development has had on nature, endangering human existence itself. Delving into the study of the processes affecting this relationship, with the philosophical dimensions it implies, is a task that demands engagement with the body of knowledge of this science. Philosophy, as a conception of the world, includes ontological, ethical, and gnoseological dimensions. Therefore, addressing environmental issues should be done from this same philosophical perspective, more specifically from dialectical materialism, which allows for an understanding of the dynamics of natural and social development. Many scientists and intellectuals converge on the foundation and conceptualization of environmental responsibility. At this point, it is necessary to clarify the elements that allow for the establishment of the human-nature relationship as the basis of environmental responsibility. This research aims, from a historical-philosophical perspective, to analyze the human-nature relationship as the foundation of environmental responsibility based on ontological, ethical, and gnoseological dimensions. Given the qualitative nature of the research, it is based on the dialectical materialist conception of the world, supported by analytical-synthetic, hermeneutic, and historical-logical methods, which allowed for the determination of contributory elements for the theoretical foundation of environmental responsibility. In this sense, it was concluded that the relationship between the ontological, ethical, and gnoseological dimensions established in the study of the human-nature relationship allows it to be established as the basis of environmental responsibility. It also contributes to the integral analysis of phenomena occurring in nature, additionally providing essential elements for the development of contemporary environmental ethics.

Secular and Theological Ethics: A Brief Overview

Ethics is a study which deals fundamentally with the rules of conduct from moral point of view. The main characteristic of ethics is to judge the value of moral act or moral conduct. Therefore, ethics means a code of conduct. The history of the development of morality grew through a long process of evolution of certain morality like ‘taboos’, habits and customs in the primitive society. There are two broad divisions of ethics i. e., secular ethics and theological ethics. The history of the development of secular ethics flourished through four periods i. e., the Greek ethics, the Medieval ethics, the Modern ethics and the Contemporary ethics. Each period has its own prominent characteristics. Moreover, the history of theological ethics grew with the rise of different religions like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Morality has been developed during the period of more than two thousand years. Within this long span of time, many doctrines, ideas and values are included in it. Hence, morality takes different shapes in different periods and ethical views also develop accordingly. In this article, an attempt has been made to show a gradual development of morality- secular and theological. Again, the similarities and the dissimilarities between secular and theological ethics are the additional concerns of this paper. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#73-74; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2023 P 59-94

‘Point and Kill’ vs Animal Rights: A Moral Examination

This study critically examines the ethical implications of the practice known as "point and kill," wherein nonhuman animals are selected and immediately killed for food, a practice that has become commonplace in many African cultures. While food is essential for the survival and growth of both human and nonhuman animals, the manner in which nonhuman animals are often treated as mere commodities raises significant ethical concerns. Despite extensive debates in contemporary animal ethics, the focus has predominantly been on issues such as biomedical research, animal confinement, and entertainment, with relatively little attention given to the ethical ramifications of using animals for food, particularly in the context of practices like "point and kill." This paper addresses the gap in the literature by interrogating the moral worth of nonhuman animals and questioning the justification for their wanton killing for human consumption. Employing critical and conceptual analysis, the study draws on the Igbo philosophy of ‘ugwu anu’ (animal integrity) to argue against speciesism and advocate for the moral consideration of nonhuman animals. It contends that nonhuman animals deserve care, respect, and fair treatment, and that the practice of "point and kill" reflects a speciesist attitude that undermines the inherent value of animal life. By bringing this issue to the forefront, the study contributes to the broader discourse on animal ethics and calls for a reevaluation of culturally ingrained practices that perpetuate animal suffering.

Classic Hedonism Reconsidered

AbstractFew views have seen a more precipitous fall from grace than hedonism, which once occupied a central position in the history of ethics. Recently, there have been efforts to revive interest in the view, including well-motivated pleas for contemporary ethicists to at least take the view seriously. In this article, I argue for the seriousness of hedonism on metaethical grounds. Taking J.S. Mill's argument for hedonism as a test case, I show that historically, classic hedonism was grounded metaethically via a commitment to two positions: empiricist epistemology and the view that pleasure occurs in sensation. Together, these two positions provided principled grounds for various iterations of classic hedonism. Moreover, these two positions are still serious options in both contemporary epistemology and the contemporary literature on the nature of pleasure. Insofar as a contemporary ethicist takes those two views seriously, they ought to take classic hedonism seriously as well.

To each Technology Its Own Ethics? A Reply to Sætra & Danaher (and Their Critics)

Contemporary ethics is currently ramifying into different sub-ethics specific to each type of technology. Although this trend has been very timely and rightly called into question by Sætra and Danaher, both these authors and their critics Llorca Albareda and Rueda leave the matter unsolved from a discipline point of view. In this commentary, we clarify the statute of the ethics of technology, which corresponds to that of a subsidiary applied ethics, and show how it is precisely that, what renders the creation of an ethics for each technology inappropriate. We thus provide a disciplinary reason to support Sætra and Danaher’s concern on tech ethics proliferation and to refute Llorca Albareda and Rueda’s relativization of it. In turn, we conclude by drawing some guidelines for tech ethics in practice.

Old Testament hospitality as reciprocity, Adam Smith and business ethics

This article aims to underscore the progression of Old Testament hospitality as reciprocity for moral guidance and, specifically, business ethics in contemporary society. The study follows a comparative analysis of Old Testament hospitality and reciprocity in the work of Adam Smith that emphasises the role of mutual relations and voluntary exchange. It will be argued that reciprocity associated with hospitality in the Old Testament is an important principle that further developed in classic economics and provides ethical principles for contemporary large-scale, multi-cultural and multi-faith societies, although different from the small-scale societies of the Old Testament world. The interface of mutual relations and voluntary exchange in Old Testament hospitality and reciprocity in Smith unveils important ethical principles for contemporary business ethics regarding responsibility and accountability.Contribution: The comparative analysis of Old Testament hospitality and reciprocity in Adam Smith’s work provides ethical principles based on mutual relations and voluntary exchange for contemporary, multi-cultural and multi-faith society, specifically in business ethics.

The problem of moral heroism in O.G. Drobnitskii’s ethics

The solution of the problem of moral heroism by the famous Soviet ethicist O.G. Drobnitskii is analyzed. The essence of the problem lies in the fact that the value-normative content of morality is traditionally interpreted as universal, though moral heroism paradoxically implies performing exceptional acts or leading an exceptional way of life (separate heroic deeds or long-term altruistic service). In contemporary ethics, moral heroism is characterized primarily as a form of supererogatory behavior, i.e., having high moral value but not obligatory. The existence of such behavior is explained by the mismatch between the two moral classifications of actions: deontic and axiological. For critics of supererogation, allowing this mismatch is identical with ignoring the obvious good-ought tie-up. Drobnitskii holds a position similar to that of the critics of supererogation. For him, the ought-moment of morality has an absolute priority over the value-moment. It follows that, for him, it is impossible to identify an action as morally positive, promoting the moral good and not consider it a fulfillment of some requirement (an obligatory one). The idea of supererogation is incompatible with Drobnitskii’s strict universalism, objectivism and imperativism. However, he considers moral heroism to be a real phenomenon and a product of the individualization of moral requirements. Drobnitskii understands moral heroism and selfless devotion to a cause as transformations of general moral duty in special, extreme circumstances. A moral hero fulfils some additional obligations and surrenders some of his rights, and he is also able to act in situations where implementing moral principles requires self-sacrifice, but does not entail obvious morally significant results in the short-term perspective.

African Liveliness as a Secular Moral Theory: Problems and Prospects

Abstract An important belief in African Traditional Religion holds that everything, both animate and inanimate objects, are imbued with an imperceptible energy known as life force. Since life force is the greatest value, it is the grounds of morality. However, it is undertheorized in contemporary African ethics, with work on personhood and harmonious relationships taking centerstage. I seek to fill this gap in the literature by further developing an entirely secular and naturalistic moral theory of life force that avoids metaphysical controversies and is known as liveliness, which was first gestured at by Thaddeus Metz (2012, 2022). I demonstrate that while a series of objections that Metz levels against liveliness affect teleological versions, they do not apply with equal force to deontological versions. Liveliness, particularly deontological versions, ought to be considered as a contender for the best African moral theory alongside those that focus on personhood or harmonious relationships.

Environmental ethics and ancient philosophy: A complicated affair

This article provides a comprehensive review of the rather intricate relationship between contemporary environmental ethics, understood as a philosophical branch, and ancient philosophy . While its primary focus is on Western philosophy, it also includes some brief yet crucial considerations about the influence of Eastern traditions of thought on environmental ethics. Aside from the introduction in the first section, the discussion is organised into three main sections. In the Reception: Ancient philosophy in environmental ethics section, I review the initial reception of ancient philosophy in contemporary environmental ethics. Next, in the Reaction: Environmental ethics in ancient philosophy scholarship section, I examine how the scholarship in AP responded to this early reception. I conclude, in the final section, with some constructive suggestions for future research.

Revisiting Aristotle’s Master-Slave Relationship: A Casual Evaluation in the Context of Human-AI Dynamics

This paper sought to explore Aristotle's handling of the notion of natural slavery and its relevance in ongoing discussions concerning the ethics of artificial intelligence. Using an extensive literature review covering his discussions on slavery in the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics, this study delved into the philosophical underpinnings of slavery within Aristotle's political theory and examines its ramifications within the domain of ethical technology. Consequently, while Aristotle's theory of natural slavery suggests that certain individuals are predisposed to service due to deficiencies in rational capacity, this concept was analysed in the context of modern AI technology, raising ethical concerns about autonomy, control and social hierarchy in human AI interactions. By relating Aristotle's philosophical framework to contemporary AI ethics, this study offered an understanding of the ethical implications of advancing technology and encouraged interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy, ethics and AI research.

Nietzsche and the Significance of Genealogy

Nietzsche and the Significance of Genealogy

Wrongdoing without a wrongdoer: ‘Empty ethics’ in Buddhism

ABSTRACT One of the biggest challenges of the study and practice of ethics is that of the moral dilemma, e.g. how should a compassionate person deal with injustice? This paper attempts to resolve this thorny issue from the perspective of Buddhist philosophy. I firstly introduce the 14th Dalai Lama’s distinction between act and actor and suggest a way to denounce wrongful acts without harboring hatred towards the perpetrator. Secondly, I argue that the philosophical grounds of this distinction can be traced back to ancient Buddhist texts on Non-Self and Emptiness, which take all things as being in a constant state of change. Thirdly, I point out that a unique feature of the ‘empty ethics’ of Buddhism is that it inspires a middle way approach which allows for congruity between justice and compassion, between the realistic and the idealistic, and between rationality and sentimentality. Based on this, I suggest that it has much to contribute to contemporary ethics.

Why Aristotle Isn’t a Virtue Ethicist. Living Well and Virtuously in Aristotelian and Contemporary Aretaic Ethics

Drawing on Anscombe, in this essay I argue that we should not take Aristotle to be a moral philosopher, nor a virtue ethicist. This is because contemporary virtue ethics has little to do with Aristotelian ethics. While contemporary virtue ethics (or aretaic moral theory, as one may call it) operates on the level of moral and thus categorical norms, Aristotelian ethics—an aretaic life ethics—is primarily concerned with pragmatic norms. The main question for Aristotle is what a good general conduct of life is. The major concern of aretaic moral theory, on the other hand, is to provide a criterion of morally right action and hence to define the concepts of the morally right, the impermissible and moral duty in aretaic terms. This shows that contemporary authors assume a primacy of virtue, while Aristotle assumes a primacy of eudaimonia. I illustrate this distinction by addressing the question of how the virtues benefit their possessor.

‶Don’t Say Neigh, Say Yay”

‶Don’t Say Neigh, Say Yay”