This is a one-page handout which responds to Kathleen Stock's 2021 book Material Girls. It considers how analytic philosophy can be introduced into this area, and specifies five kinds of argument for the claim that the sexes are socially constructed.

Trans healthcare and thus trans people have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Trans people’s healthcare situations have turned out to be so vulnerable in this crisis because they have been precarious to begin with. There are multiple ways in which trans healthcare has been affected: Surgeries and other procedures have been cancelled or postponed, and mental health services have been paused or moved online. This raises ethical questions around discrimination against trans people in (...) the healthcare system. This article argues that cancelling trans surgeries and procedures in the COVID-19 crisis is made possible through an understanding of trans healthcare as non-essential. The article explores how trans healthcare in particular has been affected by the pandemic. (shrink)

Trans rights advocacy is a social justice movement that is transforming language practices relating to gender. Research has highlighted the fact that language which constructs gender as binary harms trans people, and some trans studies researchers have developed guidelines for honouring trans people’s names and pronouns. The language of academic writing is an area of discussion where questions of trans rights and trans experiences have not yet been addressed. This paper draws on (...) two data sources to explore the citation experiences and practices of trans scholars and activists: a web-based archive of writers’ perspectives built between 2015 and 2016; and a corpus-based study of 14 research articles published in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Our analysis highlights the sensitivity that is required of colleagues who work with transgender authors’ writing, furthering our understanding of citation as a collaborative and potentially intimate and caring practice. Practices of referring to work by trans scholars pose ethical questions about the social relations expressed in citation in general, enabling applied language scholars to develop a new and different awareness of the sociality of citation. (shrink)

Over the last decades we have witnessed a proliferation of new human rights claims (e.g. the ‘human right’ to internet access) . But Milan Kundera (1991) reminds us that not all desires are human rights. Trans women athletes (and their supporters) often claim that there is a human right to sport and they derive a further ‘human right’ from this: the right to compete in the sex category with which they identify (i.e. the female category). The purpose (...) of this article is to critically assess these two claims: 1. every person has a human right to compete in sport; 2. trans women have a human right to compete in the female category in sport. (shrink)

The dispute between the transgender-rights movement and “gender-critical” activists represents a stark division in British public discourse. Although the issues of contention are numerous and require their own philosophical treatment, a core metaphysical concern underlies them. Gender-critical activists, such as Kathleen Stock, tend to argue that recognizing trans women as women requires erasing the category of biological sex. This implies that all trans women are male, and thus recognizing them as women rips female biology from the root (...) of the category “woman.” In this article, I argue that this view is mistaken. As exogenously produced sex characteristics should count toward a person's sex classification, all trans women are female. (shrink)

Liang Tao and Kuang Zhao, trans. Confucian rights can be characterized as a kind of “fallback apparatus,” necessary only when preferred mechanisms—for example, familial and neighborly care or traditional courtesies—would otherwise fail to protect basic human interests. In this paper, I argue that the very existence of such rights is contingent on their ability to function as remedies for dysfunctional social relationships or failures to develop the virtues that sustain harmonious Confucian relationships. Moreover, these remedies are not, (...) strictly speaking, rights-based, for having a right consists in having the power to claim one's rights for oneself, which the classical Confucians would curtail. I conclude by noting how we might revise standard assumptions about the practice of “claiming one's rights” to make it more compatible with core Confucian principles. 梁涛 匡钊译 儒家权利可称为是一种“备用机制”（fallback apparatus），诉诸权利仅当其他首选机制，如家族与邻里的关怀或对传统礼俗的依赖等，不能有效维护人们的基本利益时才是必要的。儒家权利的存在取决于其补救功能，其需要补救的是儒家谐社会关系及相应美德中 出现的危机、过失。但儒家的补救并不完全是基于权利之上的，古典儒家不认为人民可以代表自己提出主张，也不认为民众可以直接推翻昏庸的暴君，有抵抗权的主要是汤、武等第一级的贵族。对于儒家国家来讲，从制度上认可 人民的权利主张可能是获得社会和谐最有效的手段。. (shrink)

Gender-affirming healthcare interventions are medical or surgical interventions that aim to allow trans and non-binary people to better affirm their gender identity. It has been argued that rights to GAH must be grounded in either a right to be cured of or mitigate an illness—gender dysphoria—or in harm prevention, given the high rates of depression and suicide among trans and non-binary people. However, these grounds of a right to GAH conflict with the prevalent view among theorists, institutions (...) and activists that trans and non-binary people do not have a mental illness and that one can be trans and entitled to GAH without being depressed or suicidal. This paper challenges the orthodoxy that a right to GAH must be grounded in either of these ways and instead argues for a right to GAH grounded in a right to live and act with integrity. The standard view, which this paper explains, is that our rights to live and act with integrity ground a right to religious accommodation in many cases such as a right to not be denied social security due to one’s refusal to work a job on a holy day. This paper argues that if our rights to live and act with integrity can ground prima facie rights to religious accommodation, our rights to live and act with integrity ground prima facie rights to GAH. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Is it wrong to distract? Is it wrong to direct others’ attention in ways they otherwise would not choose? If so, what are the grounds of this wrong – and, in expounding them, do we have to at once condemn large chunks of contemporary digital commerce (also known as the attention economy)? In what follows, I attempt to cast light on these questions. Specifically, I argue – following the pioneering work of Jasper Tran and Anuj Puri – that there is (...) a right to attention, and that its existence underlies some of our claims regarding the wrongness of distractions. However, I depart from both these authors in two respects: first, I present a new way of deriving the right to attention, grounding it in the more fundamental right to mental integrity. Second, I remain agnostic on whether the contemporary business practices of capturing attention in exchange for a variety of digital products and services are plagued by routine violations of the right. (shrink)

In the coming decades humanists and trans-humanists need to wage a global campaign to radicalize the idea of human rights. We need to assert our rights to control our own bodies and brains, whether we choose to change our genders or medicate our brains. We need to assert that the measure of a society’s fairness is how universally available we make the prerequisites for achieving our fullest potential. We need to defend the right to enhance ourselves - (...) whether through education and exercise or genetic engineering and cybernetic implants. We need to extend these “human rights” and citizenship not only to all humans, regardless of nationality, but to all persons, ape, human, posthuman or machine. We need to build the global institutions that can protect the rights of persons, and expand the freedoms they enjoy. (shrink)

Recently, the concept of "gender identity" has enjoyed a great deal of attention in gender metaphysics. This seems to be motivated by the goal of creating trans-inclusive theory, by explaining trans people's genders. In this paper, we aim to unmotivate this project. Notions of "gender identity" serve important pragmatic purposes for trans people, such as satisfying the curiosity of non-trans people, and, relatedly, securing our access to important goods like legal rights and medical care. However, (...) we argue that this does not mean that "gender identity" is a metaphysically substantial thing that deserves extensive theoretical attention. There are reasons to be skeptical of such a concept. We trace the history of "gender identity," primarily to identify its roots in trans-antagonistic medical theory and its connections to the problematic "wrong-body" model--a legacy that has pathologized and flattened trans experience. Moreover, we argue that trans people primarily use "gender identity" to explain ourselves to non-trans people, rather than to discuss ourselves among ourselves. Thus, we urge theorists to resist the urge to substantiate gender identity. Instead, we encourage the development of new and better concepts, ones that attend to the lived realities of trans community and the flourishing gender terms and practices that are constructed there. If these lived realities are taken seriously, there is no need to “explain” trans people’s genders; we can simply see them as they are. (shrink)

AN ATTEMPT to understand the role of dignity in human rights is worthwhile and challenging. Popularly referred to as a “constitutional principle”, “moral precept”, or a “supreme virtue”, dignity has allowed legal systems to adopt evolutionary and impactful practices concerning the welfare of human beings. Defined also as the precursor and basis to the various human rights defined and adopted, dignity continues to facilitate the integration of diverse interests and stakeholders within the framework of human rights thought (...) and practice. By embracing several values and interests, dignity has reached out to protect-preserve-provide for the worth of human beings as well those that cease to be or are not human beings. This introduces a student of human rights to expressions like “interspecies dignity”, “intergenerational dignity”, “trans human dignity”, and “posthumous dignity”, which are all opening the door for a new consciousness in the field of human rights. The proliferating interests of the non-human entities in the form of territorial sovereignty for animals, privacy of the deceased, rights for the dead to be found in case of war/conflict etc., have been attached with an undeniable quality as that is readily found in the understanding of dignity of human beings. In the wake of such developments, there appears a strong sense of regeneration of dignity as a foundational principle, leaving the earlier formulations of personhood, sentience, capacity, and worth into disenchantment. (shrink)

The Yogyakarta Principles for the application of human rights to sexual orientation and gender identity define gender identity as “each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech, and mannerisms.” This definition and its acknowledgment within human rights politics is a key step in the fight of trans people for (...) legal protection. Our aim is to analyze this definition both historically and systematically to find out how the Western liberal conception of rights fosters specific trans politics and limits the options for others. Specifically, we claim that political liberalism and the form of subjective rights that it brings about influence concepts of identity and political strategies. While we analyze the limits of the liberal framework, our aim is to think about how it is possible that even within this framework, non-normative bodies and queer identities can be acknowledged and supported through law. (shrink)

Examining previous discussions on how to construe the concepts of gender and race, we advocate what we call strategic conceptual engineering. This is the employment of a (possibly novel) concept for specific epistemic or social aims, concomitant with the openness to use a different concept (e.g., of race) for other purposes. We illustrate this approach by sketching three distinct concepts of gender and arguing that all of them are needed, as they answer to different social aims. The first concept serves (...) the aim of identifying and explaining gender-based discrimination. It is similar to Haslanger’s well-known account, except that rather than offering a definition of ‘woman’ we focus on ‘gender’ as one among several axes of discrimination. The second concept of gender is to assign legal rights and social recognitions, and thus is to be trans-inclusive. We argue that this cannot be achieved by previously suggested concepts that include substantial gender-related psychological features, such as awareness of social expectations. Instead, our concept counts someone as being of a certain gender solely based on the person’s self-identification with this gender. The third concept of gender serves the aim of personal empowerment by means of one’s gender identity. In this context, substantial psychological features and awareness of one’s social situation are involved. While previous accounts of concepts have focused on their role in determining extensions, we point to contexts where a concept’s role in explanation and moral reasoning can be more important. (shrink)

I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, modal realists from different possible worlds can fall in love with each other. I offer a method for uniquely picking out possible people who are in love with us and not with our counterparts. Impossible lovers and trans-world love letters are considered. Anticipating objections, I argue that we can stand in the right kinds of relations to merely possible people to be in love with them and that ending a (...) trans-world relationship to start a relationship with an actual person isn't cruel to one's otherworldly lover. (shrink)

The social categories to which we belong—Latino, disabled, American, woman— causally influence our lives in deep and unavoidable ways. One might be pulled over by police because one is Latino, or one might receive a COVID vaccine sooner because one is American. Membership in these social categories most often falls outside of our control. This paper argues that membership in social categories constitutes a restriction on human agency, creating a situation of non-ideal agency for many human individuals. -/- However, there (...) are ways to resist the causal influence of social categories, and certain socially marginalized groups can be understood as attempting to do just this. I discuss two instances of social category resistance: gender pronouns and the rights of trans individuals. I suggest that the intentional declaration of gender pronouns (“she/her” or “they/them”) can be understood as an attempt to resist the causal powers of nonconsensual social categorization. Similarly, one among many reasons to support the rights of trans individuals is that their self-declarations of gender identity can be viewed as a reclamation of agency in the face of causal constraints imposed by socially defined and imposed gender categories. This lesson can be generalized to people belonging to a broad range of marginalized groups. (shrink)

In this peer commentary on Maura Priest's "Transgender Children and the Right to Transition: Medical Ethics When Parents Mean Well but Cause Harm", I argue against the "mismatch" model of trans identity. On this model, which is prevalent in institutional and medical contexts, to be trans is to have one's gender identity "mismatch" with one's sexed body.

Contextualist accounts of “woman,” including Saul (2012), Diaz-Leon (2016), and Ichikawa (2020), aim to capture the variability of the meaning of the term, and do justice to the rights of trans women. I argue that (i) there is an internal tension between a contextualist stance and the commitment to trans-inclusive language, and that (ii) we should recognize and tackle the broader and deeper theoretical and practical difficulties implicit in the semantic debates, rather than collapsing them all into (...) semantics. Moving on, I sketch three strategies to help us advance feminist philosophical endeavors, including how attending to contextual matters can lead us to further reflect on the meta-contextual, such as our role in shaping contexts and whether the working of language is indicative of a larger oppressive social structure. (shrink)

A lump theorist claims that ordinary objects are spread out across possible worlds, much like many of us think that tables are spread out across space. We are not wholly located in any one particular world, the lump theorist claims, just as we are not wholly spatially located where one’s hand is. We are modally spread out, a trans-world mereological sum of world-bound parts. We are lump sums of modal parts. And so are all other ordinary objects. In this (...) paper, I explore lump theory and investigate five arguments against it. These arguments may be the primary reasons why lump theory has not been widely accepted––or extensively explored––until now. I maintain that these arguments can be answered, and moreover, that accepting lump theory has distinct advantages, making it a competitive view in its own right. (shrink)

What makes #BlackLivesMatter unique is the implication that it isn’t only some black lives that matter, that is, not only the most commonly referenced male lives. Rather, the hashtag suggests that all black lives matter, including queer, trans, disabled, and female. This movement includes all those black lives who have been marginalized within the black liberation tradition, as well as in greater society. The movement highlights the ways in which black people have been traditionally deprived of dignity and human (...) rights. State racism and state violence are sustained together. The law creates a “subrace” out of those whom white society fears and holds in contempt. This leaves not only black Americans but all citizens vulnerable. A way to fight this form of racism is not only to create a solidarity among the oppressed members of the subrace but to create a solidarity with all members, in “vulnerable solidarity.”. (shrink)

Why has modern American conservatism committed itself to gender binaries? Examining why this new categorizing unsettles conservatives (and how they have reacted against teacher unions and transgender influencers), this paper turns to Nietzschean analysis. It finds that the unsettling of heteronormative gender norms resulted in a pivot by conservatism to perpetuate a new gender identity politics in which nonbinary and especially transgender people are scapegoated. Imagining a nihilistic interpretation of gender, conservatives have made “transgender” a signifier of amorality and barbarism, (...) envisioning themselves as warriors of normalcy. Conservative activists have named their frontier “radical gender ideology” while contesting the legitimacy of diagnosed gender dysphoria, revising its pathology, and alleging clinical gender transitioning is a financial ploy. As a result, bodies have become sites of contestation between doctors, trans activists, and groups that advocate against gender-affirming care. This paper traces the conservative movement from resentment to opposition on three fronts – pathology, pronouns, and restrooms. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie distinguished himself in twentieth-century philosophy by presenting an important objection to the traditional free will explanation for why God would allow evil: If evil is due to the free choice of creatures, why wouldn’t an omnipotent God simply create free creatures who would choose better? Alvin Plantinga, in turn, distinguished himself with his critique of Mackie. Plantinga’s main point is that Mackie made a mistake in assuming that it is within the power of omnipotence fully to create (...) just any possible world. However, Mackie made a second questionable assumption which Plantinga does not critique, and which I aim to clarify in this article. Mackie assumes that a God, as construed by classical theistic belief, who could create either of two people—one of whom would freely choose right and the other of whom would freely choose wrong—must create the one who would freely choose right. This assumption motivates Plantinga’s own account of trans-world depravity, which suggests that every free creature God might have created would have sinned had God created them. I consider Plantinga’s suggestion highly improbable. More importantly, under Mackie’s assumption, if there is at least one possible creature who would choose rightly, then there is no possibility of God ever allowing any other creature to sin, which would seem to be incompatible with their having any free will. -/- This version of the paper does have the same pagination as the published version. Permission has been granted from the Editor of Philosophia Christi to upload this contribution according to Philosophy Documentation Center terms of use. Learn more about the Journal by going to wwwepsociety. org/philchristi. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

It is widely thought that stealing, trading and destroying cultural artifacts in time of war are inherently immoral actions, and that it is right that they be treated as war crimes, which, indeed, they currently are. But oppressive cultures have their heritage and cultural artifacts too, in the form of monuments, sites of worship, and so on; and for the oppressed, these things may be awful reminders of their subordination, and may even perpetuate it. This chapter suggests that, since cultural (...) objects can be both tools and symbols of unjust oppression, their theft and destruction ought to be seen as appropriate when this would be a means of overcoming oppression. Whatever current law may say, in these instances, it would be morally inappropriate to count such acts as war crimes. Furthermore, it is bizarre that theft and destruction of cultural property are counted as war crimes when soldiers killing each other is not (due to combatant immunity). Surely killing is worse than property destruction and theft. It is therefore argued that, where possible, it would be better for conflicts to be fought using the latter methods. Finally, the chapter responds to many objections to using theft and destruction of cultural property as a method of warfare. E.g. to the objection that such property has timeless, trans-cultural, aesthetic, historical and scientific value, it is replied that justice is a more important value; and to the objection that these practices amount to cultural genocide it is replied that unjust cultures have no right to exist unmodified. (This chapter was formerly entitled: "Culture Weaponized: A Contrarian Theory of the Sometime Appropriateness of the Destruction, Theft and Trade of Art and Cultural Artifacts in Armed Conflict." The PhilPapers archived version is a pre-penultimate version of the published version.). (shrink)

This article reviews recent government incursions on questions of free speech at universities and colleges in Ontario and Alberta and presents the challenge they pose to university autonomy. Inherent in university autonomy is the possibility—or the obligation—that universities make decisions based on ethical responsibilities that can extend beyond the limits of current law. As a case study of university autonomy in matters of expressive freedom, I highlight events at the University of British Columbia, which leads me to a discussion of (...) how questions of ethical responsibility have been raised particularly in relation to the speech protection of transgender members of the university. A central issue is the need for universities to adjudicate when free speech rights meet related responsibilities with which they can conflict. I detail how, for instance, the invitation of some anti-trans speakers can pose such a conflict and should lead university communities to consider adjusting their responses in extreme cases so as to be able to more autonomously regulate hateful speech beyond applicable law. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to proof the argument – i.e. ‘there are significant linkages amongst tolerance, hybrid identities and migration.’ These linkages can be comprehended by means of conceptualising extensions of hybrid identities in aggregate trans/inter-migration processes. It can be put forward that arising hybrid identities are embedded in a blurring structure of thoughts, beliefs, states of affairs, facts, belongings and so forth. From multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism viewpoints, it is argued that tolerance and migration ought to be (...) analysed in frame of sociology of law, human rights, international migration law, and of course the European Union law. So far, normative arguments and soft law approaches are very much well integrated with social aspects of migration, tolerance, identity and culture. In this context, the study examines to what extent cultural and human components are protected by law in multiple levels from an interdisciplinary perspective. In this framework, it is crucial to raise the research enquiries: What are possible criteria for the limits of tolerance? To what extent tolerance is related to human rights and morality? What ought to be the limit of tolerance towards hybrid identities in multicultural and cosmopolitan societies? In a consistent manner, the criteria and standards developed by some leading scholars were reconstructed and discussed throughout this paper. These criteria and standards are both moral (part of a universal system of morality) and legal (international, supranational, or national – i.e. constitutional). In order to apply such standards their validity was discussed (i.e. the respective normative power has the norms at the various levels). In the case of morals, their difference to particular ethnic systems was established (i.e. criteria by which the two can be distinguished). Then the research argument was elaborated on whether and how the legal standards comply with the moral standards, how national standards comply with supranational or international standards. Likewise, the study highlights the crucial contributions of “World Society and World System Paradigms” that are associated with social space, global civil society, cosmopolitanism, ethnic diversity, cultural hybridity, human rights activism and public sphere. Recent debates in Refugee Studies (e.g. Syrian Refugee Crisis, Dual and Multiple Citizenship Issues and so forth) highlight the fact that the European Union needs to consider new aspects of tolerance for hybrid identities and tolerate cultural rights of hybrid identities, create cohesion in communities and establish intercultural dialogue amongst home-states and host-states. Sanguinely, the efforts of hybrid identities are strengthening the relations between home-host states and these ought to attract some considerable attention. The authors of this study hope that their endeavours may contribute somewhat towards that. (shrink)

This essay argues that humor can be used as an unstable weapon against oppressive language and concepts. Drawing from radical feminist Marilyn Frye, I discuss the difficulty of challenging systematic oppression from within and explore the capabilities of humor for this task. This requires expanding Cynthia Willett’s and Julie Willett’s approach to fumerism beyond affect to fully examine the work of humor in manipulating language, concepts, and imagery. For this expansion, I bring in research on feminist linguistics alongside other philosophers (...) of political humor to consider the connection between humor and world-making. I then link this with feminist world-breaking through Monique Wittig’s analysis of war machines and Trojan horses against heteropatriarchal language. Finally, I draw out the instability of humor as a war machine by investigating a bit where comedian Patti Harrison disguised herself as an official corporate brand platform to challenge the compulsory commodification of LGBTQ rights. (shrink)

A strong, but underexplored linkage exists between the current global order, world poverty and the politics of aid. Exploring this linkage, which is the key concern of this article, is crucial for a fuller understanding of the symbiotic injustice of the global order and the politics of aid. Using a conceptual thought experiment that portrays the framework of post-war global order as an intrinsically unjust “Global Games Arena”, I attempt a “vivisection” of the problematic relationship between the global order and (...) the politics of aid. In the real world, I follow decolonial scholars like Adom Getachew and Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò to argue that the modern and current global order and its social, economic and political structures are founded on the unfair gains of trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism. The empirical and analytical consequence of this situation, the article shows, is that to make aid effective or altogether end its penurious impact in Africa in particular, would require, at first, a jettisoning or remaking of the current international order. In other words, I argue that aid would not be necessary in the absence of a world order that in fact requires aid to maintain a system of global injustice and inequality. (shrink)

Reconsidering Reparations is a book about global justice. Its central philosophical argument claims that a just world would be one in which everyone enjoys the capabilities that they need to relate to one another as equals; maintains that realising this vision (in the right way) would serve as reparation for the injustices of trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism; and warns that this project is threatened by the climate crisis...

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the discovery of “representative democracy has rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of government; and in great measure, relieves our regret, if the political writing of Aristotle, or of any other ancient, have been lost, or are unfaithfully rendered or explained to us” (quoted in Saxonhouse, p. 13). No doubt there are historical reasons to study classical Greece, but between us and them lies not only the discovery of representative democracy, but (...) also the discoveries of Christianity, economics, national and trans-national political institutions, universal human rights, and modern science. What can modern political theory learn from the lessons of old books? Three recent volumes wrestle with this question. Confronting Tyranny asks what we can learn about modern oppressive institutions from their ancient ancestors. In Plato’s Fable, Joshua Mitchell claims that Plato’s Republic offers an account of ethical “imitation” superior to those offered by modern liberalism. In Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens, Arlene Saxonhouse argues that free speech in antiquity differs from our rights-based understanding of the practice, and yet it shed light on the presuppositions of modern freedoms. (shrink)

Rapid urbanization in Vietnam significantly impacts the environment and human well-being. Public parks are crucial for enhancing social and environmental sustainability in urban areas, yet their establishment and expansion require substantial funding. This study investigates the factors influencing Vietnamese urban residents’ willingness to donate to planting projects in public parks, utilizing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), which combines Mindsponge Theory’s informational entropy-based notion of value with Bayesian analysis. Analyzing data from 535 residents in major Vietnamese cities, we found that while (...) men visit public parks more frequently, they are less willing to donate to planting projects. Older residents visit parks more often and are more willing to donate, while higher-income individuals show greater willingness to donate. Most motivations—such as relaxation, physical activities, nature enjoyment, socializing, and family time—are positively linked to park visit frequency and indirectly to donation willingness. However, only relaxation and enjoyment of nature are directly associated with willingness to donate. Interestingly, higher education levels and visiting parks for children’s educational activities are associated with lower donation willingness. These findings hint at the possible existence of the free-riding problem, gender inequality, ineffective environmental education, and lack of awareness of public parks’ natural value, as well as opportunities to cultivate an eco-surplus culture through nature interactions in public parks. (shrink)

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue (...) has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau – Ponty is a French philosopher and political activist with close ties to Tran Duc Thao. The two not only had a relationship between teachers and students and colleagues at the ENS Paris - where Tran Duc Thao studied and worked, but also participated in the magazine Les Temps modernes. Merleau - Ponty's thought is therefore one of the sources of thought that has a great influence on Tran Duc Thao's philosophy. However, Tran Duc Thao's philosophical views, in (...) phenomenology, dialectical materialism and in socio-political concepts, have striking similarities and differences with Merleau - Ponty's thought. (shrink)

Từ năm 2019, Phú Thọ bắt đầu triển khai Chương trình “Mỗi xã một sản phẩm” (OCOP) như một chương trình phát triển kinh tế khu vực nông thôn theo hướng phát huy nội lực và gia tăng giá trị. Các sản phẩm OCOP đã góp phần gìn giữ và phát triển tinh hoa làng nghề truyền thống, ngành nghề mới, đẩy mạnh phát triển kinh tế nông thôn, cơ cấu nông nghiệp theo hướng bền vững. Bài viết làm rõ (...) thực trạng phát triển sản phẩn OCOP trên địa bàn Phú Thọ, từ đó đưa ra một số giải pháp và định hướng để đẩy mạnh phát triển Chương trình OCOP trên địa bàn tỉnh Phú Thọ trong thời gian tới. (shrink)

I sat by the riverbank, watching a stork family flying back to their nest after a hard working day. To my astonishment, a kingfisher landed beside me, his feathers shimmering like the pages of a timeless book.

Cities grow, and green spaces shrink, leaving urban residents feeling increasingly disconnected from the natural world. Yet, simple additions like houseplants, community gardens, and pets in urban environments can help bridge this gap, fostering a stronger connection to nature and supporting biodiversity conservation. A recent study highlights an interesting connection between urban residents’ perceptions of plant and pet diversity in their homes and their beliefs about biodiversity loss. The research suggests that the aesthetic experiences created by plants and animals in (...) people’s homes are positively linked to their beliefs in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss. (shrink)

Why do some people enthusiastically embrace green living–sorting trash, switching off lights, or purchasing eco-friendly goods–while others remain indifferent? A recent comprehensive study involving over 100,000 participants spanning 37 countries offered fresh insights into these environmental behaviors, challenging some common assumptions along the way.

Imagine a world where three out of every four wild animals have disappeared. This isn’t science fiction – it’s our reality. The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Living Planet Report 2024 reveals a shocking truth: in just 50 years, wildlife populations worldwide have dropped by 73% on average. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the situation is even worse, with up to 95% of wildlife lost.

Air pollution is a pressing global issue, demanding swift and practical solutions across nations. Polluted air is not only harmful to physical health but also to mental well-being. Research has consistently shown that air pollution is linked to respiratory and cardiovascular problems, both in the short and long term. Short-term effects include coughing, asthma, and difficulty breathing, while long-term exposure can lead to chronic asthma, impaired lung function, cardiovascular diseases, and even death. Beyond physical health, air pollution can also negatively (...) impact mental well-being, contributing to depression, anxiety, and even suicide. -/- A recent study by a group of researchers led by Tomoaki Nakaishi, a researcher at Kyushu University, has gone further, examining how air pollution affects moral perception and unethical behavior. Unethical behavior refers to actions that are either illegal or deemed morally wrong by society. This study focuses on five types of unethical behavior: fatal actions (e.g., murder, terrorism, and suicide), assault (e.g., prostitution, rape, child abuse, and domestic violence), discrimination (e.g., gender and racial discrimination), financial misconduct (e.g., fraud and bribery/corruption), and organized misconduct. (shrink)

Kingfisher, renowned for his keen eye and quick wit, recently made headlines in Wild Wise Weird, and decided to take on a global tour to investigate the trendy and mysterious phenomenon of human “eco-living.” His first stop was Dubai, where he perched atop a solar panel in the famous “Sustainable City.” -/- “How peculiar,” he mused, watching residents dash around in electric golf carts. “The humans have built an oasis of sustainability in the desert, surrounded by courtyard villas, a world-class (...) natural spa center, a horse-riding zone, and even an indoor ski park. Yet their enclave with walls is so high that my friend Larky the Greater hoopoe-lark can’t even visit his ancestral nesting grounds!”. (shrink)

Trải qua quá trình lịch sử lâu dài của dân tộc, trí thức Việt Nam luôn nêu cao tinh thần yêu nước, lòng tự hào dân tộc, và giữ vai trò quan trọng trong sự nghiệp dựng nước và giữ nước. Cũng chính vì vậy, cha ông ta luôn quý trọng hiền tài, đội ngũ trí thức, xác định “Hiền tài là nguyên khí quốc gia”, “trí thức là vốn quý của dân tộc”… Những quan điểm này tiếp tục được (...) Đảng ta kế thừa, phát huy thể hiện qua các Nghị quyết của Đảng về xây dựng, phát huy vai trò của đội ngũ trí thức. (shrink)

Employing BMF analytics to predict behaviors and intentions related to 3R initiatives, eco-friendly practices, and zero-waste lifestyles offers insights into adapting to environmental changes, an area that remains underexplored in the literature.

In the way that First Born and the grizzly bear woman once shared a home, or the young girl who happily married the python man, perhaps conservation and preservation is about nurturing and sustaining relationships–relationships of reciprocity, respect, and shared existence with all living beings. Indigenous knowledge reminds us that humans are not separate from nature but integral to its fabric. As we are facing environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, Indigenous knowledge and traditional practices offer a pathway (...) toward a more sustainable and harmonious future founded on respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. (shrink)

Cải cách tiền lương là một trong những nội dung quan trọng sẽ được thảo luận tại Kỳ họp thứ 6, Quốc hội khóa XV và đây cũng là một trong những chìa khoá để mở ra các chính sách đãi ngộ nhằm góp phần xây dựng, phát triển đội ngũ trí thức nước nhà, đáp ứng yêu cầu phát triển đất nước nhanh và bền vững trong giai đoạn mới như nội dung mà Hội nghị Trung ương 8 khoá (...) XIII, Ban Chấp hành Trung ương Đảng đã thảo luận. (shrink)

Trung Tran, Phuong-Thao T. Trinh, Thu-Trang Vuong, Hiep-Hung Pham (2019). Chapter 1. The debates and the long-awaited reform. In Quan-Hoang Vuong, Trung Tran (Eds.), The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road (pp. 17–32). Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter / Sciendo. DOI:10.2478/9783110686081-006 -/- Online ISBN: 9783110686081 © 2019 De Gruyter / Sciendo.

Universities and funders in many countries have been using Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as an indicator for research and grant assessment despite its controversial nature as a statistical representation of scientific quality. This study investigates how the changes of JIF over the years can affect its role in research evaluation and science management by using JIF data from annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to illustrate the changes. The descriptive statistics find out an increase in the median JIF for the top (...) 50 journals in the JCR, from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. Moreover, on average, elite journal families have up to 27 journals in the top 50. In the group of journals with a JIF of lower than 1, the proportion has shrunk by 14.53% in the 2015–2019 period. The findings suggest a potential ‘JIF bubble period’ that science policymaker, university, public fund managers, and other stakeholders should pay more attention to JIF as a criterion for quality assessment to ensure more efficient science management. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu này sử dụng mô hình hồi quy đa biến để phân tích mối quan hệ giữa niềm tin của người tiêu dùng, khuyến mãi, giao hàng chặng cuối và quyết định mua hàng của người tiêu dùng tại TP. Hồ Chí Minh trên các sàn thương mại điện tử (TMĐT). Kết quả cho thấy, Niềm tin, Khuyến mãi và Giao hàng chặng cuối là những yếu tố có tác động đáng kể đến Quyết định mua hàng. Kết quả (...) nghiên cứu cung cấp cơ sở khoa học cho các doanh nghiệp trong việc xây dựng chiến lược kinh doanh hiệu quả trên các sàn TMĐT. (shrink)

In the face of escalating environmental crises, the role of economics in shaping sustainable solutions has come under increasing scrutiny. Traditional economic paradigms, often grounded in the pursuit of growth and efficiency, have been criticized for neglecting the environmental costs of human activities. This disconnect between economic theory and ecological reality has prompted calls for a profound transformation in how economics is studied, taught, and applied. -/- Books on economics, as key instruments for disseminating knowledge and shaping thought, hold a (...) pivotal role in this transformation. By integrating interdisciplinary insights, challenging foundational assumptions, and prioritizing environmental sustainability, these texts can equip future economists and the broader public with the tools needed to tackle the planet’s most urgent challenges. But how can economics books effectively foster a sustainable future? How should their content, structure, and approach be to make them effective catalysts for ecological stewardship? -/- This study represents one of the first attempts to address these questions through a quantitative approach. Specifically, it analyzes Amazon’s book reviews of Better Economics for the Earth: A Lesson from Quantum and Information Theories to identify factors that stimulate and influence readers’ perceptions of economics and the environment. (shrink)

Given the number of works in the pipeline and research problems under consideration, we expect the 2012-2015 period to become a speed-up phase before a takeoff.