Confucianism and cosmopolitanism

ABSTRACT

This essay investigates the Confucian cosmopolitan aspiration. First, it examines the nature of cosmopolitanism and its distinction from universalism. It demonstrates that cosmopolitanism is a philosophical doctrine that consists of two core tenets: (1) the tenet that humankind in whole is a social-political community under the rule of law; each person has global duty and obligation; (2) the tenet that a cosmopolitan world society is one of peoples of diverse cultures that are constellated into a community under the rule of law. Secondly, it explores Confucian cosmopolitanism consisting of five tenets: (1) the vision of humankind in whole as a community; (2) the concept of one’s cosmopolitan belonging; (3) the concept of equal moral worthiness of all human beings and inviolability of human dignity; (4) the concept of cultural diversity of humanity; and (5) the aspiration to a world society of permanent peace. Thirdly, it discusses why we must have a cosmopolitan reading, not a universalistic reading, of Confucianism.     

Discussing Racial Justice in Light of 2016: Black Lives Matter,a Trump Presidency,and the Continued Struggle for Justice

The broad fields of ethical reflection on racialization, racial justice, black liberation theology, and queer theology of color must come to terms with the year 2016, which can be framed on one side with the Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other side with a presidential election cycle in which racism and racial justice played particularly salient roles. Against this backdrop, this book discussion looks at recent literature on racial justice asking three questions. How does historical consciousness shape contemporary ethical thought on racial justice? In what ways do the intersectionalities of gender and sexuality, immigration and transnationality, class, and contemporary culture present particular challenges and new possibilities? And how do the ethical frameworks of religious traditions contribute to the development of public theology for racial justice? The conclusion considers how religious ethics concerned with racial justice does harm or contributes to religiously grounded responses to racial injustice. Reflection on these questions points to the need for ongoing engagement with the black experience—broadly construed and within the context of multiple intersections—in the United States and globally in ethical analysis. However, this in turn makes particular and critical demands on how it is that we are to both teach and read religious ethics and political theology at our institutions, as well as in the churches.     

MUST ETHICS BE THEOLOGICAL? A CRITIQUE OF THE NEW PRAGMATISTS

In the last decade there has been a pragmatic turn in the work of those doing Christian ethics, especially as represented by the work of Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell. The pragmatic turn represents a critique of the highly influential work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues for a strongly intra-church ethics. The pragmatists are correct in arguing that Christian ethics must engage the public sphere. However, I argue that they are deeply mistaken in their claim that this engagement must rest on a weak or non-existent theology. I show that the claim that robust theology adds nothing to ethics, and that we can get along without it, is unsustainable.     

Canon,Repetition, and the Opponent

This essay considers two concepts of repetition in thinking about canon, the history of ideas, and the work of an opponent, both real and fantastical. I take up these motifs in a variety of figures and cases, but principally in Søren Kierkegaard’s reading of the biblical Abraham in Fear and Trembling, a text rich in interpretive challenges. How might readers in the humanities contend with interpretive rivals while investing in the power of diverse readings? The argument turns on the relationship between the struggle for self-consciousness, understood through Hegel and Freud as an appointment with otherness, and the work of interpretation, understood as the endeavor to understand others, including other texts, other minds, and one’s own mind. What is the aim of interpretation? How does interpretation fail? To which history of ideas is a reader responsible?     

The Responses of Health Systems to Marital Sexual Violence – A Perspective from Southern India

ABSTRACT

Marital sexual violence is a serious problem in India. However, marital rape and most other forms of marital sexual violence are not criminalized in the country. This qualitative study with healthcare providers (physicians and nurses), lawyers, members of a non-profit organization that offers domestic violence support services out of a hospital, a journalist and two lawyers suggest that the majority of care providers recognize that marital sexual violence is a serious concern, and agree that health systems can play a vital role in addressing both the immediate biomedical concerns of survivors, and also overall well-being. The study reveals several systemic and internal factors that hinder responsiveness of Indian health institutions. These include, the absence of a protocol or uniform internal guidelines in most hospitals, a lack of screening programs to capture the presence of violence occurring when patients visit hospitals for other reasons, a large patient load, a lack of gender sensitivity in providers’ education, an absence of domestic violence shelters, and poor interlinkages between support services such as counseling and legal services. Notwithstanding these challenges, some exemplar physicians and nurses assist survivors of sexual violence, sometimes risking their own safety. The Indian health system can be made more responsive, provided these factors are addressed, and crucially budgets are allocated for interventions.     

THE UNIVERSALITY OF JEWISH ETHICS: A Rejoinder to Secularist Critics

Jewish ethics like Judaism itself has often been charged with being "particularistic," and in modernity it has been unfavorably compared with the universality of secular ethics. This charge has become acute philosophically when the comparison is made with the ethics of Kant. However, at this level, much of the ethical rejection of Jewish particularism, especially its being beholden to a God who is above the universe to whom this God prescribes moral norms and judges according to them, is also a rejection of Christian (or any other monotheistic) ethics, no matter how otherwise universal. Yet this essay argues that Jewish ethics that prescribes norms for all humans, and that is knowable by all humans, actually constitutes a wider moral universe than does Kantian ethics, because it can include non-rational human objects and even non-human objects altogether. This essay also argues that a totally egalitarian moral universe, encompassing all human relations, becomes an infinite, totalizing universe, which can easily become the ideological justification ( ratio essendi ) of a totalitarian regime.     

Reclaiming “Natural Partnership and Communication”

The massive scale of forced displacement across the globe discloses the fractured state of the modern international order. Francisco de Vitoria’s theological approach to the law of nations, in the context of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, had a significant influence on this order’s development. This paper argues that recovering his innovative insights today can help refurbish a collective sense of international responsibility for refugees. Vitoria’s bold assertion of indigenous Americans’ dominion affirmed all human beings as members of a world commonwealth with equal claims to basic rights. The “right to travel” he articulated, by its orientation to “natural partnership and communication,” can promote refugee rights and global fraternity.     

Two Shi‘i Jurisprudential Methodologies to Address Medical and Bioethical Challenges: Traditional Ijtihād and Foundational Ijtihād

The legal‐ethical dynamism in Islamic law which allows it to respond to the challenges of modernity is said to reside in the institution of ijtihād (independent legal thinking and hermeneutics). However, jurists like Mohsen Kadivar and Ayatollah Fa?lalla have argued that the “traditional ijtihād” paradigm has reached its limits of flexibility as it allows for only minor adaptations and lacks a rigorous methodology because of its reliance on vague and highly subjective juridical devices such as public welfare (ma?la?a), imperative necessity (?arūra), emergency (i?tirār), need (?āja), averting difficulty (‘usr) and distress (?araj), hardship (mashaqqa), and harm (?arar) without interrogating the fundamentals (u?ūl) of ijtihād. In contrast, in the “foundational ijtihād” model theology, ethics, intellect, epistemology, linguistics, hermeneutics, modern sciences, history, cosmology, anthropology, and the sources of Islamic legal theory (u?ūl al‐fiqh) interact with one another to obtain resolutions that are just and non‐discriminatory.     

TORTURE AND JUST WAR

I offer an argument for why torture, as an act of state‐sponsored force to gain information crucial to the well‐being of the common good, should be considered as a tactic of war, and therefore scrutinized in terms of just war theory. I argue that, for those committed to the justifiability of the use of force, most of the popular arguments against all acts of torture are unpersuasive because the logic behind them would forbid equally any act of mutilating or killing in battle. I will also argue that looking at torture through the perspective of the just war tradition forces us to place strictures on the practice that make it hard to justify, helps us to see why torture should never be legalized, helps us to clarify when circumstances might justify torture, and suggests what sort of character is required to recognize when those circumstances have occurred.