scholarly journals The ‘Good Life’ in Intercultural Information Ethics: A New Agenda

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
Pak-Hang Wong

Current research in Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) is preoccupied, almost exclusively, by moral and political issues concerning the right and the just (e.g., Hongladarom & Ess 2007; Ess 2008; Capurro 2008) These issues are undeniably important, and with the continuing development and diffusion of ICTs, we can only be sure more moral and political problems of similar kinds are going to emerge in the future. Yet, as important as those problems are, I want to argue that researchers‘ preoccupation with the right and the just are undesirable. I shall argue that IIE has thus far overlooked the issues pertaining to the good life (or, individual‘s well-being). IIE, I claim, should also take into account these issues. Hence, I want to propose a new agenda for IIE, i.e. the good life, in the current paper.

Author(s):  
Renata M. Leitão ◽  
Solen Roth

This article argues that, in collaboration with Indigenous [and non-Western local] communities, social designers should approach “culture” not only as a form of heritage that should be preserved and transmitted, but also as a project that weaves together heritage, current material circumstances, and desirable ideas for the future. We therefore examine the notion that every culture is intrinsically oriented towards the future, representing a trajectory that links the past to a projected ideal of well-being. Thus, cultural diversity leads to numerous trajectories and distinct futures, contrary to the colonial ideology according to which only one trajectory is possible: that which adheres to the project of eurocentric modernity. Based on a participatory research action project called Tapiskwan, which focused on the aspirations of the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok, we propose that the ultimate goal of social designers should be to nurture local communities’ capacity to (re)create their own autonomous trajectories, in pursuit of the good life as their culture defines it. 


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Ferrari ◽  
Igor Grossmann ◽  
Stephen Grimm ◽  
Julia Staffel

How might one measure the wisdom and its gains from adversity? To answer this question, it is essential to define the central terms. Social scientists and philosophers have defined wisdom in a number of ways (Staudinger & Glück, 2011). In the present paper, we will build on the idea that wisdom involves knowledge about how to live well, which includes knowledge of what is more or less important for well being (Grimm, 2015). From this perspective, adversity can mean any situation that is appraised by a person as a challenge to the good life (e.g., trauma, transgressions, daily stressors). Gains in wisdom would involve the learning that emerges through mastering this adversity—learning that may result in a new look on the adverse experience, including lessons for how to cope with similar adversity in the future. This point of view suggests the need for a process-oriented account of emotion regulation (Sheppes, Scheibe, Suri & Gross, 2011; Smith & Kirby, 2009) to identify conditions under which one can successfully navigate the adversity.


Author(s):  
Paul Knights ◽  
John O'Neill

Environmental problems driven by unsustainable consumption are lending new importance to an ancient question: are there bounds to the goods required for a happy or flourishing life? A standard assumption in recent economics is that there are no such bounds. Many further argue that markets, technological change, and resource substitution can deliver sustainability while allowing consumption of final goods by consumers to increase. This chapter criticizes this approach and considers two much older traditions, the Epicurean and Aristotelian, which do recognize the existence of limits to the goods required for the good life. Their revival has been used to argue that consumption can be reduced without loss of well-being. This chapter argues that the promise found by environmentalists in the recent hedonic revival of the Epicurean tradition is misplaced, and that the Aristotelian tradition provides a richer account of why the future—and therefore consuming sustainably—matters to our well-being.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 1079-1095
Author(s):  
Noor Aisha Abdul Rahman

AbstractThe accommodation of religious personal law systems is an issue that has arisen in many countries with significant Muslim minorities. The types of accommodations can range from direct incorporation into the state legal system to mere recognition of religious tribunals as private organs. Different forms of accommodation raise different types of legal, social, and political issues. Focusing on the case of Singapore, I examine one form of accommodation which entails the direct incorporation of this law regulating marriage, divorce, and inheritance for Muslims into the state system. Administered by the Administration of the Muslim Law Act, 1966, the Muslim law binds Muslims unless they abjure Islam. The resulting pluralistic legal system is deemed necessary to realize the aspirations of and give respect to the Muslim minority community, the majority of whom are constitutionally acknowledged as indigenous to the country. This Article examines the ramifications of this arrangement on the rights and well-being of members of this community in the context of change. It argues that, while giving autonomy to the community to determine its personal law and advancing group accommodation, the arrangement denies individuals the right to their choice of law, a problem exacerbated by traditionalism and the lack of democratic process in this domain. Consequently, the Muslim law pales in comparison to the civil law for non-Muslims. The rise of religious resurgence since the 1970s has but compounded the problem. How the system can accommodate the Muslim personal law without compromising the rights of individual Muslims is also discussed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 615-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary J. Lewis ◽  
Ryota Kanai ◽  
Geraint Rees ◽  
Timothy C. Bates

Utilitas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN M. CAMPBELL

This essay introduces and defends a new analysis of prudential value. According to this analysis, what it is for something to be good for you is for that thing to contribute to the appeal or desirability of being in your position. I argue that this proposal fits well with our ways of talking about prudential value and well-being; enables promising analyses of luck, selfishness, self-sacrifice and paternalism; preserves the relationship between prudential value and the attitudes of concern, love, pity and envy; and satisfies various other desiderata. I also highlight two ways in which the analysis is informative and can lead to progress in our substantive theorizing about the good life.


1996 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-364
Author(s):  
Bi‐Hwan Kim

Joseph Raz Has Long Been Well Known as a Legal philosopher and theorist of practical reason. But it is only in the last decade that he has come to be widely identified as the most prominent defender of a distinctive interpretation of the liberal tradition. Raz wholeheartedly endorses the communitarian view that the individual is a social being, who needs society to establish his/her self-identity and to gain objective knowledge of the good, rather than a self-contained subject abstracted from any specific social experience. Unlike neutralist liberals, such as Rawls and Dworkin, he rejects ‘the priority of right over the good’, stressing the interdependent relationship between right and the good. Yet he remains very much a liberal in his commitment to the value of autonomy (or freedom) and argues powerfully for the desirability (or necessity) of incommensurable plural conceptions of the good life for the well-being of people, as well as for the liberal virtue of toleration, and for their attendant liberal democratic political institutions.


Author(s):  
Mendiola Teng-Calleja ◽  
Jose Antonio R. Clemente ◽  
Ma. Ligaya Menguito ◽  
Donald Jay Bertulfo

Abstract. This study sought to initiate conversations on the utility of the capability approach and a psychological lens in approximating a living wage. We put forth the concept of capability gap – defined as the difference between what one values and what one perceives as attainable. We used a set of valued domains of a good life that were identified based on well-being indicators in determining capability gaps. Five hundred workers (all breadwinners) belonging to households selected through stratified random sampling from purposively chosen middle- and low-income communities in the Philippines participated in the survey. From the data, we constructed a weighted capability measure that determines the capability gap, weighted by the perceived importance of each of the good life domains. We likewise derived an estimate of a living wage that yields a weighted capability that represents individuals' capabilities to achieve and pursue valued outcomes, freedoms, and entitlements. This initial attempt at estimating a living wage based on individuals' capability to achieve and pursue a good life is presented as the main contribution of the research. The limitations of the study as well as its implications to living wage research and policy are discussed.


Waste ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Eiko Maruko Siniawer

With the ever increasing sense in the 1980s that Japan had arrived as an economic power, attention was newly focused on what beyond financial wealth and material abundance constituted an affluent life, on what constituted “true affluence” or an “affluence of the heart.” Affluence—and waste along with it—came to be conceived in more psychological, spiritual, and emotional terms than in the past, with an attention to a well-being and self-fulfillment which extended beyond the purely financial. What was often being sought was yutori, or leisure, relaxation, space, and unconstricted time. Financial and material prosperity made possible self-reflection about what a good life could and should be in an affluent society.


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