Moral Imagination Research Articles

The Moral Perspectives of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari in the Syro-Malabar Liturgy

Liturgical prayers comprise a myriad of moral concepts. This is obvious in the anaphora of Addai and Mari, one of the earliest liturgies in the East Syrian tradition. Prayers of this anaphora are a source of Christian moral tradition. This article argues that there are fundamental moral concepts, moral values, and special moral cases in the anaphora of Addai and Mari. The prominent moral themes of this anaphora include conscience, justice, love, communion, holiness, gratitude, mercy, peace, and eco-theology. Moreover, participation in the Holy Qurbana incites moral imagination and subsequently helps one to arrive at good moral decisions. The result is the moral response (counter-gift) of the participation in the Holy Qurbana. The article also explores the similarities between the moral concepts of Acts of Thomas, Ephrem's hymns, Aphrahat's Demonstrations and the anaphora of Addai and Mari. This article reasons that a deep relationship exists between liturgy and morality, and one can obtain mature moral perspectives from the anaphora of Addai and Mari in the present context.

Critical Perspectives on the New Situation of Global Ocean Governance

Global ocean governance is the concretization of global governance. Various interest groups interact with and coordinate ocean issues. Global ocean governance is inevitably linked to the new global governance landscape. In recent years, a series of new scenarios in global governance have emerged. These situations have further shaped the plurality of participants and the diversity of mechanisms in global ocean governance. Science and technology innovation and application are prerequisites and prime movers for the evolution of global ocean governance. Major worldwide crises, represented by global climate change and the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, have added great uncertainty to the future development of global ocean governance. The divergence of interests and positions between emerging countries and developed countries, as well as the reshaping of the global geopolitical landscape in recent years, has led to the stagnation or deadlock of a series of international negotiations and international cooperation platforms related to global ocean governance. With the deepening of global governance, non-state actors are not only objects of ocean governance but also bearers of legal obligations and enjoy varying degrees of legal rights, participating in agenda setting, rule construction, and monitoring implementation at different levels of ocean governance. From a critical jurisprudence perspective, in the practice of global ocean governance, the relationship between non-governmental organizations, states, and international organizations is more likely to be one of reconciliation than the “state–civil society” dichotomy of moral imagination. This new set of circumstances exposes the divisive and fragmented nature of global ocean governance. This study concludes that the new situation of global ocean governance constitutes a historic opportunity for countries to reexamine the role of the rule of law during the Anthropocene to bridge the fragmentation and gaps in mechanisms and achieve a truly integrated, holistic, and closely nested global ocean governance. The question of how to implement the rule of law requires the introduction of theoretical perspectives such as the Anthropocene, complex systems theory, and the community of a shared future for humanity to undertake a fundamental critical reflection and rethinking of global ocean governance.

MENDACITY - A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ANGUISH OF SUBTERFUGE AND SELF-DECEPTION IN THREE PLAYS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Tennessee Williams is often referred to as one of 20th century Americas greatest playwrights, alongside the likes of Arthur Miller and Eugene ONeill. A staunch proponent of the realism movement, Williams is known for his enduring characters and their tragic stories. His contribution to the tumultuous literary climate of the 1940s with his distinctive, brutally honest, and emotionally complex voice, makes his work a riveting basis for research and analysis. This thesis explores the moral vision of Williams through the deceptive practices of his dramatic characters. Though illusion may be effective in disguising the bare ugliness of man, Williams emphasises the importance of mustering the courage to confront the truth, no matter what the situation. The struggle to accept truth as a necessary path to salvation is explored through the characters of three of his most iconic plays. The paper will attempt a cross-referential study amongst three of Tennessee Williams most acclaimed works Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), and The Glass Menagerie (1944) and will analyse and compare the presentation of mendacity, self-deception, and subterfuge through the contextual and historical factors that influenced the playwright, the nature of the characters, as well as his interpretation of the literary movements of social realism and existentialism.

A moral freedom to which we might aspire

ABSTRACT Reflection on free agency has largely been motivated by perceived threats to its very existence, which, in turn, has driven the philosophical conversation to focus on the question of whether we have the freedom required for moral responsibility. The Stoics were early participants in this conversation, but they were also concerned about an ideal of inner moral freedom, a freedom over and above that required for responsibility, and one to which we might aspire over the course of our lives. Though some details of the Stoic ideal would be difficult for many of us to accept, I argue that it merits our attention for the way it focuses on the removal of inner obstacles to virtue, leading to improved moral vision and the willingness to follow that vision. I then show how we can harness resources from contemporary theorizing on responsible agency to capture the structure and scalar nature of such an ideal, thereby helpfully situating ideal moral freedom in relation to the freedom relevant to moral responsibility. I outline three possible contemporary versions of such an ideal, noting how each will be sensitive to related commitments in metaphysics, moral psychology, and normative theory.

Where the Head Meets the Heart: ‘Enlightened’ Compassion Lies Between Big Five Openness/Intellect and Agreeableness

Enlightened compassion is a morally significant personality trait describing the tendency to show regard for others in an open-minded (vs. rigid or parochial) manner. We examine this trait through a “bottom-up” lens, asking: where is enlightened compassion located within the Big Five (B5) taxonomy? Across three studies comprising seven samples (total N = 2,522), we measure enlightened compassion as an interstitial facet lying between the Compassion aspect of B5 Agreeableness and the Openness aspect of B5 Openness/Intellect. The Enlightened Compassion Scale (EC Scale) has solid structural and content validity, converging strongly with Compassion and Openness (Study 1). Consistent with the bandwidth-fidelity trade-off in hierarchical models of personality traits, enlightened compassion demonstrates incremental validity over-and-above these B5 aspects when predicting theoretically relevant traits (e.g., moral imagination and moral expansiveness; Study 2) and behaviour (expansive charitable donation; Study 3). By locating enlightened compassion and its correlates within the organising framework of the B5, our work serves to deepen and integrate accumulated knowledge on this morally salient feature of personality.

Moral imagination as an instrument for ethics education for biomedical researchers

Moral sensitivity and moral reasoning are essential competencies biomedical researchers have to develop to make ethical decisions in their daily practices. Previous research has shown that these competencies can be developed through ethics education. However, it is unclear which underlying mechanisms best support the development of these competencies. In this article we argue that the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning can be fostered through teaching strategies that tap into students’ moral imagination. We describe how moral imagination can stimulate the development of these competencies through three different merits of moral imagination. Moral imagination can help students to 1) transfer and apply abstract moral concepts to concrete situations and contexts, 2) explore the perspective of others, 3) explore and foresee the moral consequences of different decisions and actions. We explain these three merits of moral imagination in the context of biomedical research and present a theoretical model for how these merits can be used to stimulate the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning. Furthermore, we describe multiple teaching strategies for biomedical curricula that tap into the three merits of moral imagination. These teaching strategies can inspire teachers to design ethics education that activates students’ moral imagination for the development of moral sensitivity and moral reasoning.

Viewing humanitarian project closure through the lens of an ethics of the temporary

PurposeIn this paper, the authors propose a new lens to examine international humanitarian organizations' responsibilities in the context of project closure, what authors call “an ethics of the temporary”. The authors offer this as an orienting ethical ideal to facilitate the moral imagination of humanitarian planners, practitioners and stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThe authors drew on recent philosophical work on responsibilities for global justice to analyze an ethical concern inherent to humanitarian practice, the proper scope of responsibility in the context of closure of humanitarian projects.FindingsThe ethics of the temporary includes four elements: situating humanitarian action temporally with attention to the past and how it shapes a current crisis and crisis response, focusing attention on anticipating and seeking to mitigate potential harm, promoting sustainability and greater equity going forward and emphasizing inclusive, collaborative approaches. The authors propose a set of questions that can foster discussion and reflection about the scope of humanitarian responsibilities at project closure.Practical implicationsAlthough the authors' work is primarily conceptual, it has many practical implications for humanitarian policy and practice. It can support critical reflection and offers a process for considering the scope of responsibility at project closure and decisions around how to close a given intervention in a manner that avoids causing harm and advances equity.Originality/valueVery little work has been done on ethical closure of humanitarian projects. Most literature offers critiques. This essay contributes a new approach to closure, the ethical ideal and practice of an ethics of the temporary.

The Euthanasia Debate and Its Implications on The Legalization of Euthanasia in Indonesia

Today, an ethical issue that is controversial and much debated is the practice of euthanasia. The ethical debate on euthanasia is basically about competing moral visions and values. The research method used in this study is qualitative. Information is collected from publications such as books and journals. The advocates for the legalisation of euthanasia based their reasons on compassion and individual autonomy. They argue that euthanasia is right because it removes human suffering. Everyone has the right to determine how to die, concerning when and how. They believe that certain lives, such as people in a persistent vegetative state, are not just worth living. Those who oppose euthanasia say it is morally wrong to kill helpless people, even at their request. Christians who oppose euthanasia base their arguments on the sanctity of life. A person’s freedom to decide on euthanasia should follow a structure of healthy moral values. Another key consideration in the debate is the slippery slope argument. Currently, euthanasia is prohibited in Indonesia, as stated in Article 344 of the Indonesian Criminal Code. As more countries legalise euthanasia, the writer believes that the call for legalising euthanasia in Indonesia will be intensified. We need to be better informed because law, medicine, beliefs and reason intersect in the euthanasia debate. The writer will give an overall view of the contemporary euthanasia debate from a Christian perspective.

The participatory value-sensitive design (VSD) of a mHealth app targeting citizens with dementia in a Danish municipality.

The Sammen Om Demens (together for dementia), a citizen science project developing and implementing an AI-based smartphone app targeting citizens with dementia, is presented as an illustrative case of ethical, applied AI entailing interdisciplinary collaborations and inclusive and participative scientific practices engaging citizens, end users, and potential recipients of technological-digital innovation. Accordingly, the participatory Value-Sensitive Design of the smartphone app (a tracking device) is explored and explained across all of its phases (conceptual, empirical, and technical). Namely, from value construction and value elicitation to the delivery, after various iterations engaging both expert and non-expert stakeholders, of an embodied prototype built on and tailored to their values. The emphasis is on how moral dilemmas and value conflicts, often resulting from diverse people's needs or vested interests, have been resolved in practice to deliver a unique digital artifact with moral imagination that fulfills vital ethical-social desiderata without undermining technical efficiency. The result is an AI-based tool for the management and care of dementia that can be considered more ethical and democratic, since it meaningfully reflects diverse citizens' values and expectations on the app. In the conclusion, we suggest that the co-design methodology outlined in this study is suitable to generate more explainable and trustworthy AI, and also, it helps to advance towards technical-digital innovation holding a human face.

Dangerous Medicine: The Story behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis, Sydney A. Halpern

Sydney Halpern’s book Dangerous Medicine tells the American story of hepatitis research with human subjects from 1940 through 1974. The book is an expression of moral outrage at researchers’ discriminatory decisions about whom to use in human experiments and policy elites’ complicity with the research — as well as their convenient spins on the studies, which they fed to a fawning media. The book is interested in the failure of moral imagination by elite researchers and government funders around long-term disability from research. Halpern situates the book in the historiography of “research abuse narratives,” and charges that histories to date are flawed because “they obscure the web of institutional and cultural supports that gave momentum to the now-condemned research” (p. 179). In three sections of three chapters each, enriched by four oral histories, the book tracks stakeholders’ “normalizing narratives,” which I understand to be justifications of research agendas and practices that aimed to neutralize criticisms and fears.

Moral Imagination, the Collective Desirable, and Strategic Purpose

In contrast to the prevalent outside-in perspectives on corporate purpose as a response to competing normative demands of stakeholders, we introduce an inside-out perspective on purpose as based in firm-specific, agentic commitments to specific values, ideals, and societal goals. Drawing on moral philosophy, we propose how strategists can develop a strategic purpose through moral imagination that involves developing shaping intentions based in values and ideals, empathetic relating, and imaginativeness in stakeholder contexts. These processes support the generation of an emergent theory of value, which we term “the collective desirable.” This theory of value—a creative synthesis of the shaping intentions of the firm, and the interests and perspectives of stakeholders—provides the foundation of purpose, which is strategic, dynamic, and generative for the firm and its stakeholders. Such a strategic purpose becomes an organizational logic of action enacted through designated processes for articulation, maintenance, and evolvability, and through blueprints for credible commitments and resource allocations. By theorizing the microfoundations of an agentic, inside-out view of purpose, our theoretical framework articulates a set of mechanisms through which strategists can develop a strategic purpose that is tightly linked to the firm’s future-oriented strategy and the exercise of moral leadership. Our conception of moral imagination as a form of prosocial prospective cognition contributes a novel perspective to the socio-cognitive and subjectivist perspectives on strategy and extends the microfoundations of strategy.History: This paper has been accepted for the Strategy Science Special Issue on Corporate Purpose.

Incident at Vichy

Incident at Vichy

The Moral Imagination of the Mahabharata. By Nikhil Govind

The Moral Imagination of the Mahabharata is an important contribution to the study of Indic epics. Since the Mahabharata’s conception, commentaries and performative retellings, vernacular formulations, modern and contemporary dramatizations, cultural histories, philological and religious scholarship, and popular visual media like children’s books, films, and television have explored how and why this epic continues to capture the Indic world’s imagination. Nikhil Govind’s work stands out. He offers a fundamental methodological contribution to a crowded academic table where historians, literary critics, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scholars of pre-modern South Asia have been seated. Today, if you are ready to pay keen attention to how the Mahabharata imagines itself and its moral ethos, you are welcome to the table. The organisation of this book into four neat, seemingly thematic, chapters—dharma, artha, kama, and moksha—is undone as the main thesis develops. Through a detailed analysis of the affect-laden and rarely discussed narrative intricacies of the Mahabharata, Govind argues that neither one of the four themes can be said to over-determine the conceptual schema of the epic. The overarching plot of the Pandava–Kaurava war throws open many ethical questions: What does dharma mean in the face of great violence? Does the martial ethic preclude reflections on peace? What is divinity? And does the divine play a necessary role in human life and social organisation, to name a few? Govind suggests that straight-forwardly didactic answers offered by the many human and divine voices of the Mahabharata are best understood as invitations to conduct ‘a detailed enquiry of the value arrived at through varied narrative situations’ (p. 112) because of what he observes to be the ‘unpredictable worldliness of events, the messy twining of emotion and politics’ (p. 15) throughout the epic. Affect moves, carrying these contingent values, and thereby giving the Mahabharata an inter-relational texture. As the first two chapters demonstrate, concerns of moksha do not always trump those of artha and kama, concerns of artha do not always trump those of moksha and dharma, and most importantly, the rhetoric of destiny complicates any superficial reading of dharma as the sole determining force of human action and its moral legitimacy.

Kant, Moral Imagination, and the Pathologies of Reason

We argue that the relationship between Kant’s theory of imagination and his moral philosophy has not been well understood. Missing is an adequate connection between his idea of sensus communis and the power of imagination to exceed the senses. This connection is close and important, and it has serious implications for how we are to apply and further theorize moral relations among human beings. Especially important in this regard is the ability among humans, in their social setting, to imagine other persons. We do this pre-cognitively, at the level of feeling. The effects of imagining other persons prior to all knowledge of them (as, for instance, rational agents), grounds the autonomy of other persons in a relationship that is far broader than knowledge.

Pluralism and a Spirituality of the (Im)possible

The relationship between pluralism and spirituality is explored in the context of a specific understanding of humanism, developed by the political philosopher William Connolly. He uses the term ‘entangled humanism’ to express his ecological view on how humans relate to other forms of being, stressing the need for an attitude of partnership and care in the face of ecological crisis. To realize this non-anthropocentric form of humanism, we need our creativity and imagination, and a spiritual affinity characterized by openness and a commitment to shared goals. According to Connolly, we need a deep pluralism in which people are ready to defend their creed in public while realizing a productive ethos of political engagement with others of different convictions. We need to find one another in imaginative ideas and creative actions with regard to problems that confront us all and that are so urgent as to force us to collective action. According to Connolly, in working together, a connecting spiritual affinity can emerge. This view is elaborated upon with the help of John Dewey’s notions of moral imagination and religious trust, understood here as key elements of an entangled humanism. The article closes by describing a spirituality of the (im)possible that can be a source of inspiration for an entangled humanism that really makes a difference in our complex but rich world.

Choosing a Side: Clinician Perspective Taking in Ethics Consultations.

AbstractEthics consultation is a service provided to patients, families, and clinicians to support decisions during ethical dilemmas. This study is a secondary qualitative analysis of 48 interviews from clinicians involved in an ethics consultation at a large academic health center. An inductive secondary analysis of this data set led to the emergence of one key theme, the apparent perspective the clinicians adopted as they recalled a specific ethics case. This article presents a qualitative analysis of the propensity of clinicians involved in an ethics consultation to adopt the subjective viewpoints of their team, their patient, or both simultaneously. Clinicians demonstrated an ability to take the patient perspective (42%), the clinician perspective (31%), or the clinician-patient perspective (25%). Our analysis suggests the potential for narrative medicine to build the empathy and moral imagination necessary to bridge the gap in perspectives between key stakeholders.

The Ethics and Politics of Religious Ethics, 1973–2023

ABSTRACTThis essay addresses the questions, “what good is religious ethics for?” and “what justification exists for the field?” in three steps. First, it canvases how religious ethicists have offered reasons for carrying out work in the field to identify anAnti‐Reductive Paradigmthat is guided by anEgalitarian Imperative. That imperative functions as a thin, minimal morality of inclusivity and equal respect that guides work in the field. Second, the essay considers the field's ends. Here the focus shifts from values that shape the field'smethodsto values that can describe the field'spurposes. That shift requires us to think in terms of a thick rather than a thin morality, one with substantive rather than procedural virtues in mind. The essay offers a constructive, substantive proposal under the rubric ofCritical Humanism. Critical Humanism justifies the study of religious ethics as an enterprise that can expand the moral imagination through its encounter with difference. It is shaped by four values: post‐critical reasoning, social criticism, cross‐cultural fluency, and environmental responsibility. Third, the essay brings the two parts of the argument together by explaining how to connect such purposes to the thin morality of inclusivity and equal respect. One upshot of the essay is to have us think not only about values, but also about power as it pertains to scholarship in the guild; hence the attention to the ethics and politics of religious ethics.

Out of This World: re-grounding justice through science fiction.

Good science fiction can be a successful vehicle for portraying justice. Science fiction can stimulate moral imagination in much the same way as the most effective justice theories, connecting the world in which we live with a range of alternative futures deliberately and creatively made plausible. A selective examination of classic and recent science fiction stories and novels provides contextual framing for considering questions of climate justice, virtuous personal action in the face of structural injustice, and the problem of what justice means when some people are regarded as "other." By connecting compelling images of individual responsibility with the complex challenges posed by striving for social justice, science fiction can also help render justice work appealing and achievable-an essential step that is reinforced in closing by a brief set of maxims.

Promoting moral imagination in nursing education: Imagining and performing.

Moral imagination is a central component of moral agency and person-centred care. Becoming moral agents who can sustain attention on patients and their families through their illness and suffering involves imagining the other, what moral possibilities are available, what choices to make, and how one wants to be. This relationship between moral agency, moral imagination, and personhood can be effaced by a focus on task-driven technical rationality within the multifaceted challenges of contemporary healthcare. Similarly, facilitating students' moral agency can also be obscured by the task-driven technical rationality of teaching. The development of moral agency requires deliberate attention across the trajectory of nursing education. To prepare nursing students for one practice challenge, workplace violence, we developed a multimodal education intervention which included a simulated learning experience (SLE). To enhance the realism and consistency of the educational experience, 11 nursing students were trained as simulated participants (SP). As part of a larger study to examine knowledge acquisition and practice confidence of learners who completed the SLE, we explored the experience of being the SP through interviews and a focus group with the SP students. The SP described how their multiple performances contributed to imagining the situation 'on both sides' prompting empathy, a reconsideration of their moral agency, and the potential to prevent violence in the workplace beyond technical rational techniques, such as verbal de-escalation scripts. The empirical findings from the SP prompted a philosophical exploration into moral imagination. We summarise the multimodal educational intervention and relevant findings, and then, using Johnson's conception of moral imagination and relevant nursing literature, we discuss the significance of the SP embodied experiences and their professional formation. We suggest that SLEs offer a unique avenue to create pedagogical spaces which promote moral imagination, thereby teaching for moral agency and person-centred care.

“Principles that transcend money”: Veterans Between Markets and Fate inNo Country for Old Men

ABSTRACTScholars debate whether Anton Chigurh, the villain of No Country for Old Men, is a personification of neoliberal capitalism or motivated by philosophical obsessions with death and fate. This article argues for the philosophical Chigurh, who among five military veterans in the novel seems least assimilated to markets and the logic of moneymaking. The article explores connections between war trauma and fixation upon mortal fate, as well as the novel’s themes of military honor and atavistic violence. The author’s argument re-specifies McCarthy’s critique of neoliberalism in the novel, which appears in the limited moral imaginations of other characters who refuse or otherwise fail to conceptualize a killer without economic gain motives.