Moral Substance Research Articles

Chen Di’s Investigations of the Ancient Pronunciations of the Mao Odes (Mao Shi guyin kao) and Textual Research in the Late Ming

Abstract Chen Di’s 1606 masterwork of historical phonology, Investigations of the Ancient Pronunciations of the Mao Odes, has been identified as foundational for Qing dynasty text-critical scholarship, providing systematic evidence for historical sound change via comparative analysis of the Odes’ rhyme schemes. I argue, however, that this research was motivated and shaped by Neo-Confucian xinxue commitments to embodied moral knowledge, typically seen at odds with later Qing approaches. Both Chen and his Taizhou school collaborator Jiao Hong located the moral substance of a text not in the intention of its sagely authors, but rather in the authentic emotional experiences prompted by its historically specific phonological and narrative features. Although recent scholarship has begun to reveal how xinxue fostered philological enquiry to reveal universal sagely truths, less well recognized is how xinxue could also motivate investigation of historical contexts—unsettling the division of moral concerns from the production of textual and historical knowledge.

Political Apologies for Historical Injustices: Engaging with Questions of Power, Utility, and Impact

Abstract The purpose of the special forum is to analyze political apologies through a variety of critical lenses in order to evaluate their efficacy for conflict mediation and redress of historical injustice. The proliferation of group apologies in the 1990s and 2000s led some scholars to herald the arrival of an “age of apology.” However, the task of assessing the impacts of these apologies and gauging their potential for fostering reconciliation has remained unfinished. The scholarship has been characterized by alternating currents of idealism and realism, but much of the work has been intuitive rather than empirical, and there is little agreement as to the evaluative criteria. With these papers, we take stock of what has been learned about political apologies, and we seek new avenues for exploration. Critics are right to question the unequal power structures that apologies sometimes reinforce, and it is important to understand how apologies leave crucial aspects of injustice untouched. At the same time, the prevalence of apologies in international affairs and the propensity of both perpetrators and victims to seek acknowledgment through the discourse of apologies suggest that continued study of apologies is warranted. Probing the performative aspects of apologies and dissecting their contradictions does not foreclose the possibility of their also having value for improving intergroup relationships, deepening historical understanding, and enacting justice, for example, by strengthening demands for reparations. Nor should we abandon efforts to understand what moral substance these apologies may convey, simply because we have seen how they can be cynically manipulated.

Doing African political philosophy from a universalist perspective

AbstractThere has been a strong impetus to set the definitional parameters of study in African political philosophy and theory. Many scholars advance the idea of a discipline intended to provide lessons that stem from “original” African moral, ideological, and political traditions. Often, these traditions and their ideas are presented as holding categorical moral substance in so far as they are seen to be specific to a culturally essentialist understanding of “Africa.” In turn, an influential part of the literature estimates the normative value of the intellectual ideas and arguments afforded by a varied historical, socio‐cultural and economic African geography by the degree to which, in being tethered to a seemingly homogenous, “culturally African” influence, these ideas can be opposed to a “Western” equivalent. In this article, I argue that the effects on the discipline of attending to, and being defined by, this cultural essentialism are at best unclear, at worst detrimental. I aim to contribute to the side of those who advocate a universalist perspective to the study of African political philosophy and thought, and who argue for jettisoning an unhelpful dichotomy between “West” and “African,” in favour of a methodological, conceptual and historical specificity that allows the discipline to be truly useful to itself and to others.

Shame, Love, and Morality

This article offers a new account of the moral substance of shame. Through careful reflection on the motives and intentional structure of shame, I defend the claim that shame is an egocentric and morally blind emotion. I argue that shame is rooted in our desire for social affirmation and constituted by our ability to sense how we appear to others. What makes shame egocentric is that in shame we are essentially concerned about our own social worth and pained by the perception of our self as socially worthless. In itself, shame entails no morally pertinent concern about others or understanding of what is morally significant. I contrast shame with the possibility of relating to others—and to oneself—with love and care. Indeed, I propose that love is essential for moral understanding and motivation. The argument of the article unfolds through critical appraisals of the main strategies for defending the moral value of shame. First, against the claim that shame entails respect for others, I argue that shame's sensitivity to the opinions of others is motivated by egocentric self-concern. Second, against the view that shame over failures to live up to moral values is morally valuable, I argue that regardless of whether the values guiding our shame are moral or not, the perspective of shame is oblivious to their moral meaning. Third, against the claim that shame is crucial for self-understanding, I argue that the desire for affirmation that drives shame is a powerful source of self-deception.

Imagining beyond nature-culture dualism: An exploration of ecological justice

In the face of rising sustainability issues, increasing numbers of organisations are trying to build compromises between their economic purpose and ecological objectives. Organisational studies focus on the analysis of such compromise processes but most studies do not seek to grasp the substantial changes advocated by ecological critiques. Our research is aimed at addressing that gap by clarifying the radical view sustained by ecological imaginary beyond conventional compromise processes. We engage in a qualitative study of biodynamics – an agricultural method based on a radical ecological imaginary – to evaluate its moral underpinnings through Boltanski and Thévenot’s Economies of Worth framework. Our findings help us to grasp the radical moral substance of ecological critique and to extend that framework beyond its dualist assumption. By highlighting antagonisms between meta-conceptions of justice rather than analysing compromises, our research provides insights into the radical organisational changes advocated by ecological critiques.

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PROGRESSIVE LAW AGAINST THE DEFENDANT ABILITY TO ACHIEVE SUBSTANTIVE JUSTICE

The enactment of the law in society aims to create justice, legal certainty, benefit and social empowerment for the community, to lead to the ideals of the court as a protector of society, the judge must always prioritize the 4 (four) legal objectives above in every decision he makes. This is in line with what the law is based on, namely the law for the welfare of the community. The poor are often victims of unfair law enforcement due to their ignorance of law enforcement and financial incompetence. The purpose of this study is to analyze the progressive law applied to poor defendants seeking substantive justice and to find out and analyze the state should be able to assist poor defendants in the judicial process in accordance with the rule of law principle. This research uses normative juridical method. Judges in deciding legal cases for the poor should have a progressive view, thus judges will conceptualize each article in the legislation not only as a statement about the existence of a causal (cause and effect) relationship that is straightforward according to logical law but also always contains moral substance originating from ethics and professionalism of judges.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte as a theologian

The article examines the philosophical work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) in terms of his theological views. An analysis of Fichte’s accusations of atheism is provided. The paradoxes of “spirit” and “spiritual” in human life itself and in Fichte’s own doctrine of religion are considered. A creative reconstruction is carried out for those parts of “science”, where the productivity of the very idea of theology and philosophy of religion is presented. The article investigates the theoretical implications of the idea of Fichte’s “I” and, on the basis of the inclusion of historical and philosophical generalizations, the so-called “pre-Fichte” criticism of I.Kant. The relevance of the philosophy of Fichte’s religion is revealed and its connection with the modern era is investigated. The thesis that theology is the science of the Absolute as the subject of a person’s creative search is substantiated. Also, the article supports the creative productivity of the very idea of theology and philosophy of religion. The authors compare the views of K.Forberg and Fichte. God, according to Forberg, is the regulatory principle of ethics, and religion itself is not a theory, but the duty of a moral person. But man, according to Fichte, is not called upon to create a moral “world order”. On the contrary, he himself is created and supported by it. The work concludes that the time of reason does not cover the entire totality of time. The people are not just the majority of the population, their basis lies in the moral substance. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the state is to develop the humanitarian culture of the people.

Relacja prawa i moralności z prawnego punktu widzenia. Moralność partykularna a moralność kooperatywna

This article describes the relation between law and morality when applied to solving legal problems. The relation in question is not understood solely as a conflict between law and morality which implies a need to decide in favour of one or the other. Indeed, moral substance of law make references to morality not only possible but necessary. The limit for those references is established by the principle of equality before the law. Moreover, an internal diversification of morality is analyzed. Some part of it needs to be secured by law, which in itself does not harm the social or individual identity, that is, public and private morality is distinguished, then minimal and maximal morality – concepts proposed by Michael Walzer. This idea, approached from a legal point of view, leads to the formulation of what seems the best-founded proposal: particular and cooperative morality.

Эстетические принципы и особенности исламской религии и их влияние на исламскую семью

The article examines the aesthetic principles of Islam and their influence on the family, including the Islamic one. A person in an Islamic family is focused not on a specific image, but on the emotional world. In a family, a person seeks an exquisite sensual being, mental and spiritual pleasure. The Islamic family is beauty-oriented, where calligraphic symbolism is associated with sensual emotions. The article substantiates the idea that Islam and the Islamic family reject Christian imagery. This also affected the Bashkir family, which is largely predetermined by such a mild form of Islam as Sufism. But the author of this article was primarily interested in the moral substance of the people, the family as a natural and moral union of man and woman. In this respect, the antinomical nature of love, the teachings of I. Kant and I.G. Fichte about love and family. The author comes to the conclusion that the ideology of the Islamic family and its aesthetic principles coincide with the national and artistic thinking of peoples. The family is focused on the beauty and morality of interpersonal relationships.

On the Irreducibility of Moral Incapacity

AbstractThere is a growing consensus that moral incapacities are an important feature of the moral life and moral character. Philosophers are, however, somewhat at odds over the status and explanatory role of such volitional limits in models of moral psychology. They are sometimes understood reductively, as the products or expressive manifestations of underlying, working parts of character (such as dispositions, beliefs, passions, and values). Others view moral incapacities as constitutive elements of character, that is, primitive features of moral mindedness and agency which help give a person their moral substance and shape. I defend the constitutive conception by arguing against the most promising reductive account available: Dwight Furrow’s account of the incapacity underlying Oscar Schindler’s moral heroism. This gives strong evidence that moral incapacity is a basic and constitutive feature of our conception of character.

Характеристики нравственной сферы личности студентов-психологов в ситуации морального выбора

The present study focuses on characteristics of the moral sphere of personality in psychology students in a situation of moral choice. The author examines deontological foundations of professional psychologist training and substantiates the provision that the development of professional and ethical qualities and the moral sphere of personality should form the core of a future psychologist’s training. In the professional activity of a psychologist, specific moral decisions are made based on the specialist’s personal choice, and the moral substance of these decisions depends on the characteristics of the moral sphere and its level of development. The article presents results of an empirical study of the moral sphere of psychology students. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of empirical data was conducted by means of the “Friend-Advisor-1” method developed by E. K. Veselova, S. A. Chernyaeva. Statistically significant differences were revealed in general indicators of the moral sphere between full-time and part-time extramural students. The latter exhibit a higher level of moral integrity, and they tend to make more positive and fewer negative choices than full-time students. Qualitative analysis showed that extramural program students adhere to more traditional moral values and principles and offer clear volitional decisions based on the sense of duty, social norms, law, and an assessment of consequences. Extramural psychology students have higher moral indicators than full-time psychology students. This suggests that moral values are better developed and more stable in mature adults than in young people. Also, statistically significant differences were revealed between male and female psychology students on the following variables: F — general advice, RAC — rationalization and T — alienation. Male students are inclined towards general formal advice, emotional detachment, and unwillingness to influence actions; in their opinion, everyone must make their own decision how to act in situations of moral choice. They are ready to provide freedom of choice in decision-making, recognizing a person’s subjectivity and taking into account the level of his or her personal development. Female students tend to rationalize and explain the reasons for the proposed advice, to show concern for loved ones, generosity, and charity. This indicates the presence of such professionally important qualities as empathy, responsiveness, a desire to help, altruism, philanthropy.

Ambiguous Bonds: Relationships between Farm Workers and Land Beneficiaries after Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Programme

In this article, I examine the complex interplay between authority, land rights and belonging in new resettlement areas as revealed through relationships between ‘landed’ beneficiaries and ‘landless’ farm workers living on farms a decade after Zimbabwe’s land reform programme. Land beneficiaries and farm workers shared ambiguous moral bonds: land beneficiaries relied on farm workers to make their land productive, but the two groups were also closely connected socially and shared complex relations of dependency. However, in moments of conflict, land beneficiaries reconfigured farm workers not only as ‘ethnic others’ but as unrighteous beings, lacking in moral substance. Working through a land-cum-labour dispute between a small-scale land beneficiary and a group of farm workers that was taken to a local chief’s court, I argue that such discourses of moral lack can be read as attempts by land beneficiaries to assert and naturalise their authority over farm workers. Despite having been largely excluded from state land allocations, farm workers maintained a sense of entitlement to live on farms and own land left to them by their previous white employers. Land beneficiaries’ distancing of farm workers was used to try and delegitimise this sense of entitlement, contributing to the production and reproduction of a rural underclass of farm workers excluded not only from land, but also from basic citizenship rights.

Social Origins of Buddhist Nominalism? Non-articulation of the “Social Self” in Early Buddhism and Nāgārjuna

In the following, it will be argued that Nāgārjuna (ca. 150 CE) adopts a Buddhist nominalism that encompasses not only a position towards abstract entities, but resonates with a nominalist perspective on the “social reality” of persons. Early Buddhist texts, such as the Suttanipāta, argue that human persons defy a classification in hierarchic “classes” (jāti), because there is no moral substance, e.g. of Brahmins. Differences between individuals do not exist by nature, since it is the individual that realizes difference according to the specific personal realization of action (karman) and moral cultivation. Buddhist “nominalism,” therefore, has at least one of its central roots in a rejection of a socially privileged “selves,” a stratified social hegemony, and religious truth claims. Nāgārjuna, on his part, radicalizes nominalism as a threefold correlation of the “non-articulated self,” a “non-articulated” reality, and finally, a “non-articulated” dimension even within all concepts, names, and designations. In this vein, Nāgārjuna’s śūnyavāda can be seen as a consequent attempt to neutralize unwanted social and psychological consequences of ontological language-use. Nāgārjuna even self-critically questions the position that the workings of a Buddhist path of liberation can be articulated, which seems to be a remarkable parallel to certain roots of Western nominalism.

쿳시의 『치욕』-성찰의 서사전략

This essay examines how Coetzee"s Disgrace embodies a mode of reflectivity, requiring a reflective distance to the conventional understanding of human life and relationships. In its high-minded pursuit of moral substance, some prior criticism on Disgrace tends to downplay the reader"s role in interpretation, reducing the work’s meaning on the context from which it arose, overlooking the text’s aesthetic form. By contrast, this paper suggests Disgrace’s meaning is not exhausted by its original context, also proposing the text’s ethical issues and problems are not confined only in the work’s moral content, but inseparably related to the text’s form. In advancing this view, this essay examines how this novel shows that the complexity of Lurie"s existence infiltrates the very form of the work, not just its content. Against some critics’ complaining that the work’s ethical dimension of the form does not provide moral guidance to our concrete lives, this paper views the work’s aesthetic reticence to engage in active ethical normativeness as the work’s deliberate narrative strategy to alert the main character reflectively to the complexities of human life and condition beyond problem solving attitude of life, as Lurie by and large fleshes out his moral case, for example, turning it into his own mode of fictional opera. Coetzee"s work, in which the formal and moral notably hard to separate, in turn sensitizes readers reflectively to the intricacies of moral issues of the work.

The Tyranny of the Majority and Its Remedies: An Islamic Overview

In modern Western political discourse, the ‘tyranny of the majority’ has been widely discussed as an obstacle to viable democracy. Across the years, various measures and institutional mechanisms have been developed and introduced to prevent such tyranny. Meanwhile, Islamic legal thought-from legal maxims sanctioning majority interests to the concept of dhimmah-appears to prioritise the interests of the majority at the expense of the minority. This article provides an overview of key aspects from the ‘tyranny of the majority’ discourse before enriching the discussion with a comparative study of Islamic political thought, emphasises the dynamics of majority-minority relations. While the discourse on the tyranny of the majority may inform the Islamic legal tradition about the challenges of running a plural society, Islamic principles also offer a lot of potential resources, particularly in providing moral substance and a more complex discussion of the ethics of regulation. Finally, this article proposes a win-win solution that safeguards both the welfare of the majority and the minority, thus enhancing a sense of co-existence and cooperation in society.

De la tierra al aire

This article analyzes the representation of nature in Aníbal Núñez’s poetry, halfway between the ecological commitment and the elegy for the environmental disaster. While the poet’s initial books show the parallels between nature-based fables and advertising codes, since Naturaleza no recuperable there is a continuous transformation of landscape into culture, as well as a progressive loss of nature’s real sense and a degradation of its moral substance. From then on, the depiction of nature adopts the descriptive neutrality of historical chronicles (Estampas de ultramar), takes refuge in art (Figura en un paisaje), or is dissolved in the funerary performance of ruins (Alzado de la ruina). More generally, Aníbal Núñez’s symbolic world offers a metaphorical transposition of postmodern vacuum and advances the role that certain topoi (locus amœnus, beatus ille) play in contemporary Spanish poetry.

The Legal Ethics of Nelson Mandela

Can a good lawyer also be a good person? In answering in the affirmative, it is helpful to note the legal career of Nelson Mandela — a lawyer — and also a person recognized the world over as being a good person of ethical and moral excellence. The development of Mandela’s professional identity unfolded in the midst of his engagement with the core moral questions that all lawyers must face. Observing Mandela’s engagement with these ethical and moral questions is informative for law students and young attorneys also seeking to lead a professional life in the law that provides inspiration and moral substance. By retelling the story of the development of Nelson Mandela’s professional identity in the law, I hope to demonstrate that a good lawyer can be a good person, as Nelson Mandela was, through the pursuit of a number of different ideals.

The Idea of God in Kantian Philosophy

The issue of existence and justification of the Supreme Being is constantly approached by Immanuel Kant in his entire work. For Kant, the ultimate goal of the nature created by God id man as a moral being: the world was created according to man's moral needs. This is why it is said that, after Kant, teleology leads to a moral theology, one that is not about the possibility of proving rationally God's existence but which is about stating that moral life is possible only if God exists. Under these circumstances, though the “idea of God” is presupposed in most Kantian works, we insist, below, particularly on what is debated when appealing to practical reason. In the theoretical philosophy of the Critique of Pure Reason, the idea of God as Unconditioned, as a being that is absolutely necessary, is seen as a transcendental ideal determined through an idea as a prototype of perfection necessary to everything that is contingent and determined in our sensible world: what we can do to conciliate sensible experience with the Absolute Being is to presuppose an extra-phenomenal reality designated as transcendental object: we presuppose its existence but we cannot get to know it. Later, in Critique of Practical Reason, God is postulated (together with soul's immortality) as a condition of the supreme value of moral life, the Sovereign Good (union of virtue with happiness). Since in the sensible world moral conduct does not warrant proportional happiness, the virtuous ones has strong reasons to believe in the reparatory intervention of a superior power: God, as moral ideal and warranty of moral order. “Morality leads, inevitably, to religion, through which it (morality) extends over a moral Lawgiver” claims Kant. Under these conditions, religion, understood as the belief in the existence of a supreme Lawgiver, has, for Kant, an exclusively moral substance. In the last part of the present study we insist on the work Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, we attempt at arguing the possibility of discovering some elements of “philosophical Christology” in Kant's practical philosophy: first, because, for the philosopher of Konigsberg, Christian doctrine provides the only concept of Sovereign Good that meets the exigencies of practical reason; and second, because we consider significant Kant's debates on God's Son as impersonated idea of the Good, the Perfect Man well-pleasing to God, Moral Personality, noumenal archetype originating in mankind, etc.

The Subject’s New Clothes: Immanent Transcendence and the Moral Self in the Modern Confucian Discourses

In Modern Confucian philosophy the notion of the moral Self which is expressed through the natural moral substance (xingti 性體) represents both the foundation of each individual and the core of the universal reason. The indivisibility of the moral Self from its concrete activities within the social sphere differs in many various aspects from prevailing Western political and philosophical theories that are based on the separation of the empirical and transcendent subject. Hence, this holistic special feature of the moral Self is closely related to one of the basic paradigms of Chinese intellectual history, i.e. the paradigm of immanent transcendence, which is also known as the paradigm of ‘radical’ or ‘pure’ transcendence. The present article introduces and analyses both above-mentioned, mutually intertwined traditional notions through the lens of modern interpretations, focusing upon the philosophical work written by the representatives of the second generation of Taiwanese Modern Confucians.

Earth-Honoring Faith

Earth-Honoring Faith