This paper examines ethics in finance, specifically related to responsible investment. In recent years, socially responsible principles are becoming the de facto standard not only for socially responsible but also for profitable investing. For instance, the United Nations developed the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in 2006, which require institutional investors to incorporate ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) issues into investment analysis and decision-making processes. This raises the following question: can responsible investments be justified from an ethical point of view? (...) In this paper I first explain responsible investments. Then, I turn to the ethical foundation of responsible investments. There are two arguments for responsible investments. I argue that both fail. Therefore, my conclusion is that the ethical foundation of responsible investments is not firm. (shrink)

In Japan, from the pre-war to the post-war period, unique indigenous philosophizing cultures have been nurtured outside academism. The contemporary new philosophical practices which have been recently imported from Europe and North America are welcomed and widespread in Japan because of this indigenous traditional cultural soil cultivated by those local forerunners in the past. In this paper, the 'Life Experience Writing Movement', which was popular from the late Taisho era until the early Showa era, as well as the Science of (...) Thought journal, which was founded by Shunsuke Tsurumi and the other six coteries in 1945 and continued to be published for fifty years until 1996, are discussed. (shrink)