Editorial

In April 2014, the Editorial for the first issue of the tenth year of Journal of Global Ethics presented a reflection upon the first decade of publication. At that time, the Journal announced the introduction of a new editor, the first to be engaged since it was conceived as an initiative of the University of Birmingham’s Center for the Study of Global Ethics by Donna Dickenson and the trio who would edit the journal, Sirkku Hellsten, Christien van den Anker, and Heather Widdows. That editor, Eric Palmer, will step away following this issue, completing ten years at the journal. Another long standing member of our editorial collective, Christine Koggel, expects to complete her service of more than five years with the upcoming December issue. Even if just a bit early, the moment seems right for another decade’s reflection as the editorial team changes and the journal approaches its third decade. The brief commentary of this editorial is also intended to prompt readers towards similar and more detailed conversation on the current state of global ethics, in response to a call for submissions that is announced further below.

Has the subject area of global ethics shifted? One might indeed expect change – and tracking and contributing to such change should indicate the relevance of this journal and of the work that is pursued within its pages. One can hope for shifts that reflect improved analysis that marks progress in both the interdisciplinary work and the more traditional fields of study that the journal promotes. So, are the foci of ten years ago still familiar, are the events that spark the conversation similar, and are the contours of inquiry and the demands of the field much as they were a decade ago?

Such discussion could proceed into great detail, and we wish to encourage that discussion through the call for submissions. Here we provide a mere illustration that looks to the past decade for comparison, taking our cue by drawing from the twenty-one responses that the journal received to our open call for a Forum on the future of global ethics that were published within the three issues for 2014. In those reflections we find some specific foci for discussion that have since receded, perhaps in light of political developments – the example of cosmopolitanism is suggested below. Other concerns have become more prominent, as new theoretical approaches have come into their own – such as the introduction of decolonial approaches to global ethics, presenting a proposed marked change, and perhaps a significant challenge, to the whole enterprise.

The contributions by Nigel Dower and Jay Drydyk that opened the 2014 forum provided representative theoretical reflections upon the idea of global ethics itself. These authors inquired as to whether a universal ‘global ethic’ should be sought, or whether at least universal points of agreement on standards should be sought. Such an ideal of a global ethic may be contrasted with recognizing a plurality of ‘global ethics’ that may be viewed as providing varied, distinct standards and ideals, yet not necessarily inharmonious ones.

In his contribution, ‘Why global justice matters’, Kok-Chor Tan indicated the advantages of universality, claiming that ‘a theory of global justice is needed for identifying what counts as legitimate problems of justice’, and is needed for tying these to duties, since ‘we cannot know the content and the limits of [agents’] obligations  …  without some theoretical guidance’. In Tan’s approach, theory may be considered universal, and treating it as a ‘a problems-driven enterprise’, referring to cases, ensures its relevance as global, rather than existence as ‘a philosophical parlor game’. Des Gasper’s approach was complementary, but more directly framed as an applied philosophy, analyzing views and assumptions about ‘ethical connections on a global scale’, through undertaking ‘systematic descriptions and understanding of the ethical stances that are expressed or hidden in the work of influential stakeholders and analysts’. Contributions by Anna Malavisi and David Crocker asked particularly for reflection upon topics such as corruption and inequality of power, and communication of academics with development agents, such as aid workers.

Adela Cortina displayed an approach that is still recognizable as universalistic, but that drew from pragmatist philosophy and discourse ethics. Cortina presented global ethics as a task of harmonizing political processes and producing a ‘universal normative force’ that nevertheless ‘assumes cultural differences’. And D.A. Masolo, in ‘Re-charting global ethics’, complemented Cortina with a discussion of political community that also demanded ‘enclaves of cultural difference’, among citizens, situating his analysis in the context of immigration flows from Africa to the Global North. Both Cortina’s and Masolo’s writing showed marks of the European nationalism/cosmopolitanism discussions that featured especially from the 1990’s forward, prompted in part by the emergence of the European Union as well as early steps in perhaps similar directions in some other parts of the world and by a reinvigoration of the United Nations. In Cortina’s case, Jürgen Habermas’ ideal is featured; in Masolo’s, it is Anthony Appiah’s. Appiah’s book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers (2006), sits prominently in the midst of a discussion that might be bookended by David Miller’s On Nationality (1995) and Martha Nussbaum’s The cosmopolitan tradition: A noble but flawed ideal (2019). The topic seems to have become a less common one since the vote for Brexit (2016), the Presidency of Donald Trump (2017–2020), and parallel trends in several countries. We think it worth noting and reflecting on a trend that may be unsettling to consider: that cosmopolitanism, though it is still discussed, was a much more prominent subject of inquiry, and more prominent in the pages of this journal, a decade ago.

Kimberly Hutchings in her contribution elaborated on the plural approach to global ethics, drawing from relational ethics to encourage the development of a conceptual approach that ‘deliberately de-centres  …  the privileged position of the theorist’. Thaddeus Metz, in ‘Harmonizing global ethics in the future: a proposal to add south and east to west,’ complemented Hutchings’ contribution, challenging the centrality of ‘utility, harmony and capability’ approaches, and indicating the importance of harmonizing distinct philosophical traditions. Gottfried Schweiger made the case for the relevance of recognition theory to global justice. How has the discussion shifted since then – on plural voices, on finding what is common, on recognition and hospitality? At the least, we lately find new approaches that directly confront these pluralist strategies by beginning from the plausible assumption that comprehension may be profoundly hampered by social interests that produce or reinforce ignorance – ignorance that may consequently undermine productive ethical discussion.

We note developing threads of discussion on ‘decolonial’ methodologies within the pages of this journal and others, threads that begin from lively current discussion of ‘epistemologies of ignorance’ and of ‘epistemic injustice’, tracing back for example to Charles Mills’ The Racial Contract (1997) and Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice (2007). Though one finds discussion of epistemic injustice in the contributions to the 2014 Forum by Anna Malavisi and Gottfried Schweiger, and discussion of the ‘neo-colonial’ and ‘post-colonial’ in several other authors as well, the challenge that was seen in 2014 was different in kind, for it was presented as criticism in service of the advancement of the discourse of global ethics. Recent decolonial voices include some who call into question the entire intellectual endeavor. One such theorist, Aakash Singh Rathore – whose work is reviewed and considered by Aejaz Ahmad Wani in the issue of the journal that precedes this one – asks whether withdrawal from academic discussion is an appropriate response to largely Euro-American discussions of global justice, since removal from that discussion may allow for alternative discussions that are not beholden to global values – capitalist, globalist, and western academic ones as well. Rathore’s view finds parallels in the thought of others, and withdrawal from the broad conversation for the purpose of creating a distinct space – a space for discussion that is decolonized – is also a current subject of African thought, considered by Michael Omoge, Uchenna Okeja, and others.¹ The decolonial argument differs from the earlier ‘anti-development’ discourse that was prominent in the 1990s, particularly in its use of epistemic injustice as the basis for withdrawal from global discourse. The withdrawal itself distinguishes their approach from the ‘southern epistemologies’ and ‘progressive multiculturalism’ that featured prominently a decade ago in the writing of Boaventura de Souza-Santos, which was also pursued in the vibrant collective activity of the World Social Forum.²

To bring this discussion to bear on the previously noted focus, the increasing significance of decolonial philosophy may be one important reason why cosmopolitanism has lately waned as a focus within discussion of global ethics. Decolonial approaches are altering the discussion, and we expect they will produce novel inquiry within global ethics, as well as significant challenges and alternative framings of the concerns that are familiar within global ethics discussions.

We could extend these reflections beyond the intertwined examples of cosmopolitanism and decolonial approaches and look into other recent developments in ethical theory, such as new approaches to feminist, capability, and value analysis. Some recent theoretical contributions, by contrast, do not call into question, but offer new or renewed foundations for global ethics; for example, explorations by various Chinese authors (see, for example, a 2021 special issue of this journal, volume 17, number 1), and by Catholic and other authors, including environmentalists, on ideas of common good and ‘our common home’ (see, for example, the joint project of that name by the Vatican and the Stockholm Environment Institute, at https://www.sei.org/publications/ourcommonhome/).

This editorial offering is meant, however, to be brief and illustrative: it is offered to prompt further reflection from readers, who might themselves respond to the accompanying call for submissions. We would like to also direct readers to consider changes to the global context that have altered the space within which ethical consideration proceeds. We welcome, for example, contributions that reflect upon innovative technologies, new contours for civil society, and the consequences of recent political developments, as well as the shifts in agency and responsibility that arise through those changes. Within the reflections of a decade ago, discussion of technology was slight: only one author, Shunjo Majima, took up that focus, discussing the possibilities for new food sources – insects and in vitro cultured meat – and the ethical implications of the development of military robots and drones. One might now focus more sharply upon changes in our social lifeways and changes to the shape of corporate power that have resulted in this past decade from rapid advances in genetic modification (CRISPR), in vaccine production (for COVID-19), in the new dimensions of artificial intelligence (for example, ChatGPT), and in the social impacts of computing (impacts on employment, and of use for public disinformation and espionage). Authors in 2014 wrote of new responsibilities proposed for nations in transition to more developed status (see Julian Culp, in ‘Rising powers’ responsibility for reducing global distributive injustice’), and developing state and individual responsibilities for addressing climate change (Asuncion St Clair, and many others). It is unsurprising that, over a ten year window, certain challenges, such as climate change, and the problem of forcibly displaced populations, grow ever more pressing. But we may find it surprising that some other concerns too grow more rather than less pressing – that Syria, then the greatest source of displaced populations, remains so, ten years later; and that the foci of our most concerted global efforts, such as extreme poverty and malnutrition, have persisted despite our earlier expectations, or have indeed grown, despite that, in 2015, they were targeted for zero prevalence by 2030.³

We now ask you to call attention to new and developing concerns that contributors to this journal might appropriately choose to focus upon. For the twentieth anniversary year, in addition to the regular article stream, we ask for brief introductions and comments concerning the future directions of the fields of global ethics, global justice, and development ethics. We particularly hope that reading these reflections will spark the interest of graduate students and early-career scholars, and gain the attention of practitioners – and we hope that some of the reflections will come from among those groups as well. We also hope that the publication of these reflections will lead those at advanced stages in their own work to reflect upon the possibilities they envision for future practice and scholarship in these fields. This is an opportunity for the journal’s readers to write very directly for the purpose of calling the attention of colleagues, and especially future colleagues, to specific areas in which you would wish to see work accomplished in theory, in research and in action.

We consider this section of offerings to be a forum, rather than a space for traditional peer review: consistent with the Editors’ judgment concerning the suitability of the offering, we expect to publish all Forum offerings that we find to be cogent, whether their character is primarily informative, critical, or speculative. We hope that writing presented in the 2014 Future of global ethics forum and writing published in the earlier parts of this 2024 forum may also prompt further reflection within submissions for later issues in the forum. Please see the call for contributions, which may be found just following this issue’s editorial.

Beyond this editorial and the call for submissions, this issue consists of refereed material from the journal’s usual article stream. Austin Mbozi, in ‘Autonomy plus communion: A double-dignity African efficient-based moderate cosmopolitanism’, proposes a Grundnorm, a comprehensive and adequate basic norm, that builds upon recent discussion within African ethical theory. Mbozi proposes a norm that, he argues, ‘captures human dignity, basic rights, communal harmony and personhood as the four core values that feature prominently in African ethics’. In advance of the intricate exposition that is presented in defense of the proposal, Mbozi provides a helpful survey of recent writing in African communitarian thought. Mbozi highlights as his starting point an exchange between Mogobe Ramose and Thaddeus Metz in which the former criticizes the latter for introducing the concept of a Grundnorm into African thought, and particularly the philosophical discussion of ubuntu, and in which Metz responded.

In ‘The Other – a troublesome dyad?’, Paul Walker and Terence Lovat survey philosophical accounts that allow them to outline and explain the concepts of ‘near other’ and ‘far other’. The ‘near other’ references those relationships in which closeness to another more readily permits empathy for and with them. The ‘near other’ concept is echoed in works from Kant to Husserl to Schopenhauer to Habermas to Levinas, for example, and it illustrates the (relatively) easy application of the golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It is also illustrated in modern day examples of the results of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) in cases of moral decision making and of the point and purpose of clinical encounters between health professionals and patients. The ‘far other’ characterizes the contemporary context of ‘deep-reaching cultural, religious, social, ethno-political, and value diversity’ across the globe, a globe that has shrunk as a consequence of widely available exposure to diverse cultures and beliefs through travel and the Internet. In this context, those different from us can be perceived as fundamentally unlike ‘us’ and can be the objects of an ‘othering’ that thereby creates in-groups and out-groups. Members of out-groups are distanced from ‘us’ and are valued less than in-group members, between whom consensus is more easily achieved. According to Walker and Lovat, the first step is to recognize a common humanity across differences. From here, encounters and dialogues with the far other can be built. Walker and Lovat end by sketching an account of a ‘dialogical approach to morality’, one that builds on respect, tolerance, and consensus so that a better understanding of the other’s values and meanings can be gained among those impacted by moral conflicts in particular situations.

In ‘Towards an ethics of compassionate care in accompanying human suffering: dialogic relationships and feminist activist scholarship with asylum-seeking mothers’, M. Emilia Bianco and M. Brinton Lykes reflect on their experiences and interactions with Central American asylum-seeking mothers resettling in the Boston area with their children. Multiple relationships are at stake: that between Bianco as student and Lykes as supervising professor; those between the mothers and children and the two authors, and those in a local grassroots network that supported the mothers’ needs, documented their experiences, and advised the mothers on legally seeking asylum. The authors reflect on the different demands and expectations within these relationships – including the demands of conventional research ethics, of meeting needs in the face of humanitarian crises, and of knowing meanings and conditions facing migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers within the United States. The authors depart from conventional research ethics that supports a distancing from human subjects and instead argue for the roles of compassion, care, and dialogic relationality in what they refer to as a ‘feminist research ethics of compassionate care’. Influenced by and emergent from the research they describe are factors and processes that shape their understanding of a ‘feminist ethic of compassionate care’, one that puts the focus on the political, relational, and feminist aspects of what it means for activists scholars to do research in contexts of humanitarian crises.

In ‘Transboundary associations as agents of boundary transformation’, Tuomo Käkelä focuses upon the conceptual problem of just origins of a democratic polity and its borders, reaching past the pure fiction of an original contract (for example, those of Hobbes or Rousseau) to consider the conceptual ‘boundary problem’. Clearly, ‘it is impossible to have a democratic process before there is a people’, so, how should the boundaries of democratic collectives be conceived, as a subject of justice? Käkelä begins from the above-quoted passage of Frederick E. Whelan and surveys various recent proposals to address the problem of establishing a demos. Jonathan White & Lia Ypi refer to a pairing of political norms and processes of contestation, and others, Seyla Benhabib and Brian Millstein, reach to discursive processes. In section 3, Käkelä draws in depth from Etienne Balibar’s articulation of the collective social activity that continually generates the conditions that uphold boundaries, and Käkelä proposes, in section 4, a theory of the demos in which a role is given to ‘transboundary associations’ such as the World Social Forum and the School Strike for Climate. Käkelä articulates the role of such associations, and their relation to locally-based associations, in ‘the democratization of the functions and meanings of state borders’.

In ‘Post-conflict Amnesties and the Plea Bargain Analogy’, Patrick Lenta considers the possibilities available for judging amnesties from the general perspective of retributive accounts of justice. Post-conflict amnesty offers, which are often considered to reframe justice as transitional or reparative and which explicitly subordinate desert to promote social welfare, may be expected to present a particularly challenging case for justice on a retributive account. Lenta begins from accounts that also allow space for non-retributive considerations of justice: considerations that might serve to balance variations in punishment that would be inequitable or disproportionate if the considerations were solely those of desert concerning the individual case. For example, if the accused is offered a plea bargain that reduces punishment, then the retributive ideal may yet be served through the naming and conviction of confederate criminals. Other ends may also be served: for example, in the production of a less onerous legal process for victims. Lenta argues that some amnesties, which generally assign moral culpability and demand confession, can also be seen as providing criminal liability and legal punishment that is reduced. So, the acceptance of the terms of such amnesties may be framed as acceptance of a plea bargain. Lenta provides a detailed account of the framing and the consequences of such amnesty arrangements, focusing particularly on the case of the processes in East Timor in the first decade of this century.

In ‘Towards an Action-Guiding Theory of Human Rights’ Cristián Rettig argues that for any (moral) human rights theory to be a truly action guiding theory, it must meet three necessary conditions. First, the theory must go beyond recognizing the entitlements of right bearers, to identify a set of correlative duties that specify what actions, or types of actions, would be required to satisfy entitlements. Second, in order to be action guiding, a theory must identify a small enough set of agents to whom these correlative duties must be allocated. Put simply, the first condition holds that an action-guiding theory must show what must be done, while the second condition requires the theory to identify who must do it. The final condition Rettig argues for is some sort of decision making process that will provide some guidance about what actions to take in situations in which it is not possible to take actions that fully recognize all of the rights-based-entitlements of right bearers impacted by the action. In other words, a theory must provide a procedure to define which rights should prevail in conflicts of human rights duties. Rettig does not insist that these necessary requirements will be jointly sufficient for an action guiding theory, nor will they eliminate the need for informed judgment with each action identified and taken. Rather, the paper aims to provide valuable and necessary steps towards a human rights theory that delivers authentic guidance for protecting and promoting human rights.

Notes

1 See these authors’ contributions to the ‘African Epistemologies’ lectures hosted by the Institute for Humanities in Africa (2021-present), available at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYFGI0-hEJRIIcuzhaojq6h_W68Zf9ywa. Also see the continuing discussion in the pages of the journal Philosophical Papers, noting particularly the special issue, Epistemic Decolonization (Issue 49:2, 2020). The progress of the discussion in that journal from 2020 forward might be contrasted with earlier contributions in the issue Africa and Global Justice (Issue 46:1, 2017), in which decolonial themes featured as tentative skeptical challenges, rather than positive philosophical programs. See writing within that issue by Uchenna Okeja (‘Introduction,’ 2) and Katrin Flikschuh (‘Should African Thinkers Engage in the Global Justice Debate?’ 33-58).

2 Anti-development discussion representative of the 1990’s is collected in Majid Rahnema and Victoria Bawtree, eds. The Post-Development Reader (Zed Books, 1997). Phrases from Boaventura de Sousa Santos are found in Another Knowledge is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies (Verso, 2007), and see Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (Routledge, 2014). An effort to knit discourses of multiculturalism and of epistemic justice into cosmopolitanism is also found in this journal: Robin Dunford. 2017. “Toward a Decolonial Global Ethics.” Journal of Global Ethics 13 (3): 380–397.

3 The United Nations Secretary General’s March 2023 report, ‘Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals,’ indicates doubt that the first of the Sustainable Development Goals will be achieved by 2030, and doubt that the second will be advanced at all: ‘Given the current trends, 575 million people (nearly 7 per cent of the world’s population) will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, compared with 800 million in 2015 (or 10.8 per cent). … In 2015, 589 million people were experiencing hunger, and by 2021, that number had risen to 768 million. Projections show that, by 2030, approximately 670 million people will still be facing hunger – 8 per cent of the world’s population, the same as in 2015. Despite global efforts, too many children continue to suffer from malnutrition, and the current annual rate of reduction in stunting must increase by 2.2 times to meet the global target.’ (A/78/80-E/2023/64, 6-7).