Narratives and the Ethics and Politics of Environmentalism: The Transformative Power of Stories

By revealing the centrality of stories to action, to social life and to inquiry together with the implicit assumptions in polyphonic stories about the nature of humans, of life and of physical reality, this paper examines the potential of stories to transform civilization. Focussing on the failure of environmentalists so far in the face of the global ecological crisis, it is shown how ethics and political philosophy could be reconceived and radical ecology reformulated and reinvigorated by appreciating and exploiting the potential of stories. This could enable radical ecologists to effect the major social and economic changes necessary to meet the global ecological crisis. What we need, it is argued, is a new, polyphonic grand narrative

Review of Jonathan Kahn, Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in the Post-Genomic Age

This article is book review of "Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in the Post-Genomic Age" by Jonathan Kahn. KEYWORDS: Book Review, Race, Medicine, Health Care, Ethics and Political Philosophy, Medicine and Health Sciences, Philosoph

Reflective equilibrium: individual or public?

The paper explores whether the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) in ethics and political philosophy should be individual or public in character. I defend a modestly public conception of RE, in which public opinion is used specifically as a source of considered judgments about cases. Public opinion is superior to philosophical opinion in delivering judgments that are untainted by principled commitments. A case-based approach also mitigates the methodological problems that commonly confront efforts to integrate philosophy with the investigation of popular attitudes. This conception of RE is situated in relation to alternative accounts, including those of Daniels, Rawls, and Wolff and de-Shalit

Needing and Necessity

Claims about needs are a ubiquitous feature of everyday practical discourse. It is therefore unsurprising that needs have long been a topic of interest in moral philosophy, applied ethics, and political philosophy. Philosophers have devoted much time and energy to developing theories of the nature of human needs and the like. Philosophers working on needs are typically committed to the idea that there are different kinds of needs and that within the different kinds of needs is a privileged class of needs that is especially normatively significant. Some philosophers go further and make rather grand claims about needs. They claim that needs are central or fundamental to moral thinking and that we must have a needs-centred moral theory or a general reorientation of moral philosophy around needs. In this paper I aim to do two things. First, to show how applying recent work on modal terms can help us to understand thought and talk about needs. This is the positive part. I then use these ideas to cast doubt on the more ambitious claims about needs. Put briefly, a proper understanding of claims about needs undermines the idea that the concept of needs is fundamental in moral thought or in moral philosophy. Ambitious needs theory fails

INTRODUCTION

Nine years ago the members of the Political Theory group at the University of Minho (now the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society) decided to hold the first edition of the Meetings on Ethics and Political Philosophy. It was conceived as a yearly encounter among researchers of the various disciplines in practical philosophy, fostering an amicable discussion among peers which would attract prestigious scholars and provide young researchers with an opportunity to present their work. So far this initiative has been met with success. Its last edition—the eight, in June 2017—gathered more than 68 participants, selected from the more than 162 abstracts that were received

The Republic of Ignorance

Ignorance is trending. Despite universal compulsory education; despite new tools for learning and great advances in knowledge; despite breathtaking increases in our ability to store, access, and share a superabundance of information - ignorance flourishes. [excerpt

Toward an Ecological Civilization: The Science, Ethics, and Politics of Eco-Poiesis

Chinese environmentalists have called for an ecological civilization. To promote this, ecology is defended as the core science embodying process metaphysics,and it is argued that as such ecology can serve as the foundation of such a civilization. Integrating hierarchy theory and Peircian semiotics into this science,it is shown how “community” and “communities of communities,” in which communities are defined by their organization to promote the common good of theircomponents, have to be recognized as central concepts not only of ecology, but of life itself. This perspective is used to defend Lovelock’s “Gaia” hypothesis and the call of Prugh, Costanza, and Daly for strong democracy. An ethics and political philosophy is sketched based on “eco-poiesis” or “home-making,” which is equated with augmenting the life of communities, both human and non-human