Ethical Interpretation Research Articles

A New Interpretation of Animal Ethics

A New Interpretation of Animal Ethics

Buddhist Ethics as a Path: A Defense of Normative Gradualism

This essay defends a new interpretation of Buddhist ethics: normative gradualism. According to normative gradualism, what we have normative reason to do depends on our stage along the Buddhist spiritual path. The essay shows how normative gradualism can justify distinctive features of Buddhist ethics and reconcile consequentialist and eudaimonistic interpretations of Buddhist moral thought.

Brain Text and Sphinx Factor: An Ethical Interpretation of Adultery in Julian Barnes's Fiction

The theme of adultery occupies a central position in literature as it features intense emotions and conflicts between the self and others in its interplay of loyalty and illicit desire. From the perspective of ethical literary criticism, brain text and Sphinx factor are two critical terms that help us explore the value of adultery as a fictional theme. As one of the basic forms of a material carrier that literary work relies on, brain text stores human beings’ cognition and perception as memory in its special biological form, interacting with the Sphinx factor which is composed of two parts — human factor and animal factor. This article examines the interactions between different brain texts of adultery and the Sphinx factor in Julian Barnes’s novels Metroland, Before She Met Me and The Only Story, and unravels how he opens a space within the plot of adultery and its text for ethical play. It argues that Barnes uses adultery to explore the ethical function of the brain by illustrating each figure’s brain texts and the interplay of the Sphinx factor in the love triangle (the adulterer/adulteress, the betrayed spouse, and the adulterous lover). The protagonists in these novels continuously combine and modify a series of brain texts, resulting in different combinations and the interplay of the Sphinx factor, which in turn affect the formation of brain texts and ultimately lead to different ethical choices. Barnes’s stories of adultery are ethical tales through which aspects of the human condition and human nature are put on display.

Sungmoon Kim’s Democracy After Virtue

Sungmoon Kim’s <i>Democracy After Virtue</i>

Book Review: Towards an Ethics of Autism - A Philosophical Exploration

“Towards an Ethics of Autism: A Philosophical Exploration” is an intricate ten-years exploration book of Kristien Hen on the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence (philosophical) and moral principles (ethical) interpretations to better understand the concept of autism.

Language of Space in Live of Saint Erasmus

The article is devoted to the consideration of the category of space in the Old Russian text. The text of the live of Erasmus was used for analysis. The novelty of the work lies in the reference to the text of the monument, in which the category of space was not previously considered. The research is based on nominative vocabulary with spatial meaning. In the course of consideration, various types of spaces in the live were identified: real-geographical, urban, sacred, biblical, symbolic. The axiological attitude of the genre becomes important for understanding space in live: space is interpreted in a religious-symbolic way. It is showed in the article that the living space is built horizontally and vertically. It is emphasized that the horizontal movement of the hero reflects the movement of the hero in the geographic space. The path is understood both literally and metaphorically. Particular attention is paid to the opposition of the top and bottom that is significant for the text of the live: the top is associated with the divine, the bottom is associated with the concept of the devil. It shows how the biblical space is created by references to the biblical text. The symbolic space is also associated with vertical opposition and has a religious and ethical interpretation: the image of the city of the saint appears, intended for the righteous. The axiological attitude is also reflected in the transformation of space or its overcoming when describing some miracles in the text.

Penggemblengan Sumber Islam Sebagai Manifestasi Utama Pembinaan Falsafah Kritikan Sastera Islam Sayyid Sayyid Abd al-Raziq: Analisis Karya Manhaj al-Islami fi al-Naqd al-Adabi (The Abolition of Islamic Sources as a Main Manifestation of the Philosophy of Islamic Literary Criticism Sayyid Sayyid Abd al-Raziq: Analysis of the Book of Manhaj al-Islami fi al-Naqd al-Adabi)

This study aims to look at the fusion of Islamic sources applied by Sayyid Sayyid cAbd al-Raziq as his main work in developing a unique and distinctive Islamic literary philosophy. On the one side, it is his effort and reflection on the refinement of the philosophical framework of Islamic literature that is considered to be entirely non-Islamic and largely dependent on Western ideas. As a result there are significant contradictions in Islamic values and this has prompted al-Raziq to produce a work that refines these issues. This study applied qualitative methods in the design of content analysis by analyzing the primary source, Manhaj al-Islami fi al-Naqd al-Adabi. The findings of the study have found that al-Raziq has optimally used Islamic sources as his primary vehicle in producing a philosophy of literary criticism that is truly Islamic. This is reflected in his efforts through the fusion of Islamic sources including the Qur'an, Hadith and also ethical interpretations in the scope of his philosophical debates including al-Turath al-Islami, al-Turath al-Jahili and al-Turath al-Madi.

From Poacher to Protector of Attention: The Therapeutic Turn of Persuasive Technology and Ethics of a Smartphone Habit-breaking Application

This paper critically investigates the ethical perspectives and practices of individuals and organizations who make persuasive technologies (“persuasive technologists”). An organization that claims to be at the forefront of ethical persuasion is behavioral software company Boundless Mind. Yet Boundless Mind sells ostensibly oxymoronic software products: an Application Programming Interface for third-party applications that optimizes the capture of end user attention, and an application for end users on how to make third-party applications less persuasive. Drawing upon Foucault’s interpretation of ethics as an “aesthetics of existence” and the related concept of “therapeutic authority,” I argue Boundless Mind justify the “poaching” and “protecting” of user attention based on a view of the human subject as fixable and their capability to instrumentalize user subjectivity to socially desirable ends. I walkthrough Boundless Mind’s technology-habit-breaking application Space and highlight a behavioral technique administered by Space called stimulus devaluation, which enables the user to develop a transformative relationship with their technology habits and persuasive applications. I conclude the paper by arguing that a persuasive technology ethics based on fixing the user obfuscates the power of persuasive technologists by limiting the scope of ethical inquiry to the activities of the user.

Sharedness as Belonging

This article draws on in-depth ethnographic research with the Layene (People of God), a little-studied Sufi Muslim community based in Dakar, the present-day Senegalese capital. My analysis of everyday and ritual performances serves as a way to understand what it means to be Layene, a community guided by particular (re)interpretations of equality, community ethics, and religious practice and discourse. I focus primarily on how the Layene reinterpret the Wolof concept of teraanga (hospitality/prestation) as constituting a kind of ‘radical sharedness’, which is viewed as the ethical foundation of the Layene faith. My study uses ethnographic research with Layene community members, discourse analysis of written and spoken Layene sermons and sikr (invocations of God), and content from Layene community websites to examine how specific ritual performances bring about religious communion as well as social change.

A comparative examination of the tensions of sustainability managers in Korean and Japanese MNCs

Despite the growing attention on the conflicting dimensions of corporate sustainability, little is known about the tensions experienced by managers when adopting global corporate sustainability standards. In East Asia, more specifically, these standards are often viewed as strategic tools that differ from the indigenous and normative understanding of environmental and social contribution. In this paper we take a cultural viewpoint to examine and explain the tensions—and reactions to these tensions—of corporate sustainability managers in South Korean and Japanese multi-national corporations tasked with the implementation of global standards. Through 65 in-depth and comparative interviews conducted in Seoul and Tokyo between 2012 and 2017, we found that corporate sustainability managers in South Korea and Japan similarly encounter societal-commercial, traditional-new and individual-collective tensions. Nonetheless, our evidence indicates that they react to those tensions in contrary ways because of the roots of their indigenous sustainability, which are predicated upon different interpretations of Confucian ethics. This paper contributes to the literature on corporate sustainability by bringing into the analysis the tensions of corporate sustainability managers in East Asia.

Living Hadith in the Bari'an Ritual of Sidodadi Society

This research is conducted to comprehend the typology of living Hadith in Indonesia based on the ritual-based Hadith in Sidoadi’s society. The ritual-based Hadith called Bari’an ritual. the Sidodadi's people have been trying to preserve the Bari'an ritual. This ritual is related to a major change in the history of the Dudak village, which is now called Sidodadi. This study focuses on how the views of the Sidodadi's people on the Bari'an ritual, the ritual forms of Bari'an in Sidodadi, the meanings of the present Bari'an rituals, and its relevance to the values of the Hadith. This is a socio-cultural study with a phenomenological analysis approach. The problem is answered based on qualitative data with the technique of interpretation of emic and ethics. With such emic and ethical interpretation techniques, it can be seen that the forms of the Bari'an ritual in Sidodadi historically have shifted including its motive, meaning, as well as values. The shift is caused by a transformation of the beliefs of Sidodadi's people from Islam 'Kejawen' (Javanese Islam) filled with myths, superstition, and sesaji, turned into Popular Islam filled with values of Hadith.

The Right to Be Forgotten and COVID-19: Privacy versus Public Interest

Recent studies highlight the importance of digital surveillance to gather individual health information due to the global pandemic caused by the new COVID-19 disease. This paper analyses its legal and ethical implications at the interface between the individual right to privacy and the collective interests of public health. We framed the discussion in law, deontology and utilitarianism. The lasted theories and human rights, especially privacy, are crucial in our argument. Health-derived dilemmas and efforts to solve them, especially by information technologies, bioethics and law, exist at these perspectives' interface. In particular, we analysed the intersection between autonomy, the right to privacy, and the so-called ‘right to be forgotten’ in the public health context. In other words, we studied the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of health data - a radical means of control over personal data established in Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Given the lack of specifics regarding collection and re-use of such data under the broad scope of public health purposes, implied consent does not address the issue of proportionality. We highlight legal safeguards’ insufficiency, suggesting applying the ‘right to be forgotten’ according to an ethical interpretation.

Ethical Interpretation of the Concept of Natural Slavery in Aristotle's Philosophy

Ethical Interpretation of the Concept of Natural Slavery in Aristotle's Philosophy

NEW FACE OF RELIGIOUS AFFAIR MINISTER AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF QUR’ANIC ETHICS: A SYNCHRONIC-DIACHRONIC READING ON QS. AL-HUJURĀT (49): 11-13

Aesthetic phenomenon that is happening in Indonesia is suspected by the election year. Debates between presidents that contain "contempt of contempt", either by quoting the mistakes of a presidential candidate in the past or by searching for incumbents presidential incumbents positively, raises concern for the writer. The immoral act was followed by the phenomenon of the appointment of a former military officer as the Minister of Religion of the Republic of Indonesia in the cabinet “Indonesia Maju” for 2019-2024 working period. Through the reflection on these backgrounds, the author initiated to reconstruct Islamic ethics in the present context. This paper uses the interpretation of Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (d. 923) in his Jamī 'al-Bayan, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuthi (d. 1505) in his Durr al-Mantsur, and Hamka (d. 1981) in his Tafsir Al-Azhar. The author also reads the development of ethical concepts in various literatures diachronically, for example the concept of ethics in al-Miskawaih's perspective and the social-humanity ethics of Austin Fagothey. The final results in this paper are expected to provide a new horizon for various the rightaway polemics. The epistemology of the Qur'ani ethic formed by these three cross-period commentators shows a conclusion that the ethical values in Kalam Allah need to be formatted in humanitarian missions. The author claims HAMKA's Al-Azhar Tafsir as an interpretation of social ethics in the Qur'an that is most relevant to the current context in Indonesia. HAMKA sees that the Qur'anic ethics is able to bring the concepts of faith and piety into social awareness to fight poverty, crime, discrimination, intolerance, and disagreements. The concept embodies the integration between Qur’an axiology in QS. al-Hujurat (49): 11-13 with universal humanist principles such as equality, justice, democracy, protection of rights, and peace. All of these values can be diplocrammed with the spirit of the election of the Indonesian republic's minister of religion who understands nationalism and spiritualism.

An Ethical Interpretation of Gandhi’s Views on Religion: A Critical Assessment

An Ethical Interpretation of Gandhi’s Views on Religion: A Critical Assessment

Figuring India and China in the Constitution of Globally Stratified Sex Selection.

The advent of techniques of sex selection that rely on assisted reproduction led to a questioning of whether sex selection should be deemed always and everywhere unethical. While China and India are normally associated with condemned practices, they are also implicated in processes that constitute globally stratified sex selection inclusive of its more valued form, often referred to as family balancing. Through an application of Ong and Collier's concept of global assemblage, I demonstrate how family balancing, which has taken on a "global form," is tied to an "assemblage" of factors related to the anti-natal, population control contexts that have been pervasive in Asia. Three simultaneously occurring processes since the mid-1990s constituted stratified sex selection: the surfacing of China and India as figurative counter examples in deliberations of ethics on new techniques; active (inter)national surveillance of sex ratios as well as denunciation and criminalization of sex selective abortion in China and India; and the role of China and India in neoliberalizing population control and developing globalized markets in reproduction. Accounting for globally stratified sex selection requires a more robust interpretation of ethics that rethinks disciplinary approaches just as much as relativist ones in which respect for individual autonomy tends to overtake all other concerns.

TELEOLOGICAL AND DEONTOLOGICAL JUDGMENT OF CLIMATE-RELATED INNOVATIONS: MANAGERS' PERCEPTION STUDY

Ethical perception of innovations is a research area which has been advocated as a suitable topic for study in recent years. Its focused on moral judgement (recognition that innovation has an ethical dimension), moral decision making and actions. From the point of view of climate change and climate-related innovation the ethical perception affects the involvement in the process of its implementation. In this paper, we use the context of climate change to explore the relations between ethical interpretation and innovation in more detail. The article aims at presenting considerations and research findings dealing with perception of climate-related innovation from the ethical perspective. We use the exploratory cluster analysis to develop a set of propositions to explain when interpretation in terms of opportunities, threats or concern may, in fact, encourage innovations. The population of the analysis involved 750 organizations. We present two mediation mechanisms (teleological and deontological); these are individual moral obligations and seeking for social legitimacy. At the center of a deontological approach, there are principles of justice, basic rights, duties, obligations, responsibilities, proper conduct, and inherent natural rights of others. Teleological judgement lies in assessing its consequences and looking for a social legitimacy thanks to emphasizing positive effects. The paper contributes to the literature by identifying ethical aspects relating managerial interpretation to climate-related innovations. Firstly, it extends the theory of innovation management to the ethical aspects of climate-related innovations. Secondly, the paper provides empirical evidence regarding the perception (in ethical and managerial terms) of climate-related innovations by managers.

National Consciousness as a Factor of the Socio-Economic Development of Russia in the 17th — 19th Centuries

Capitalist relations in Russia emerged and developed in the 17th — 19th centuries. These relations were superimposed on the specific features of the public consensus that was achieved in 16th century and predetermined the particularities of the national socio-economic model. The origins of this model goes back to the religious and ethical discourse of the 15th century, as well as to the understanding of the foundations and nature of Russian statehood of the 15th — 16th centuries. All these features led to the formation of certain attributes of national consciousness and had a significant impact on the nature of socio-economic institutions. The humanistic values of the Russian Middle Ages had arisen out of Orthodoxy. The collective humanism of the state and its religious and ethical mission gave a minor role to the development of individualistic principles, which, on the contrary, were of great significance in Western Europe. This article shows a set of historical and spiritual factors that have played an important role in the formation of specific national consciousness characteristics. The authors make an attempt to analyze the influence of such factors on the nature of the national socio-economic model and its development in Russia in the 16th — 19th centuries. The article proposes an original concept according to which, in the course of the historical development of Russia, the most important economic categories (property, wealth, labor, capital, economic activity) obtained not only an economic, but also a kind of ethical interpretation, that is, they can be considered both as economic concepts and as cultural and moral phenomena. The methods of identifying historical and spiritual dominant factors that influenced the formation of the Russian socio-economic model give new opportunities to study national peculiarities. These methods allow clarifying the historical and cultural institutional potential for creating an effective economic policy in Russia and other countries.

The Renewal of Tradition in the Political Thought of Early Modern Japan: The Confucian Concept of Dao and the Question of the Origin of Social Order in Ogyū Sorai’s Theory

In Japan’s early modern period, Confucian philosophy was considered as a pattern of political discourse. Hence, many Japanese thinkers of the time were involved into solving political problems. The paper deals with the theory of social order developed by Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728), a major Confucian philosopher and the most progressive thinker of the time, who criticized modern schools for the practical incompetence of their ideas. Sorai’s theory unfolded around the idea of the Way of Early Kings, which he saw as a complex of principles that formed the foundation of social order. The Confucian concept of Dao is fundamental for this idea, the ethical interpretation of which was proposed by Sorai’s contemporaries, while Sorai considered the Way as a political category. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the role that Confucian thought played in the forming of the language of political discourse in Japan. Further, the author discusses Sorai’s ideas on the early kings and the Way created by them, as well as on social order, the role of the ruler, and human nature. The author pays special attention to Sorai’s theory of language that connects his lexicographic and political works. The fact is that since Sorai’s attention to the Way was grounded on his methodology, he believed that careful work with the language was the way to proper government and social order. The article concludes with an analysis of the way Sorai theorized the concept of Dao. On one hand, in his practical precepts, Sorai offered a pragmatic and politically-problematized interpretation of Dao. On the other hand, in his ideas on Heaven, gods, and spirits, Sorai offered a metaphysical perspective of Dao that is characterized with concerns for ontological and epistemological questions. As a result, in order to point out the significance of Sorai’s utilitarian and disenchanting world ideas since they were an important step in the history of Japanese philosophy that preceded modernity, the author attempts to describe Ogyū Sorai’s logic of social order based on both the pragmatical and metaphysical perspectives of his theory.

An ‘armour’ against anguish: Costume design considerations around protecting actors in emotionally distressing roles

Actors and singers frequently portray characters who experience distressing events, yet this may cause anguish for the performers themselves and require them to perform personal emotional management to cope with their own feelings during a production. This case study discusses and documents my costume design ethos and processes for the Sydney 2018 production of Clare Barron’s play, You Got Older (2015), which required the two lead actors to play characters who were experiencing profound fear, grief and loss. The design approach drew on Monks’s work on the relationship that actors have with their costumes and d’Anjou’s interpretation of Sartrean ethics within the context of a design practice. Once I had determined that the nature of my role as designer for this production would be to offer the actors emotional support through costume, I applied Woodward’s notion of comfort in everyday dress to the context of performance costume to ascertain how costume might contain a talisman and/or function as a form of psychological, ‘soft armour’ within the context of the play. Finally, this report uses Tonkinwise’s writing on ethical design alongside a semi-structured interview with the lead actor in You Got Older, Harriet Gordon-Anderson, to examine the forms that such protections took within my designs for the play and offers methodological considerations regarding designing costumes to protect and comfort performers playing emotionally distressing roles, should the actors require it.