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1. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Kozi Asano D. Miller on our Responsibility to the Global Poor
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I want to discuss D. Miller’s arguments concerning our responsibility to secure the basic human rights everywhere in the world. His arguments are very interesting because he tries to balance two perspectives to see human beings. First, as needy and vulnerable creatures, we need certain items or conditions in order to have minimally decent human lives. Without those items or conditions, we are harmed. Second, as choosing agents, we are responsible for the consequences of our actions. In the first half of the paper, I describe Miller’s arguments. Our basic needs give rise to basic human rights. So when somebody is denied basic human rights, it imposes upon the rest of us a responsibility to restore them. This is a demand of justice. So, at first Miller appears to advocate a strong claim of our responsibility to help the global poor. But he considerably weakens this responsibility. How? First, he thinks that the deprivation of basic human rights is largely brought about by people of poor developing countries. So, we do not owe a primary responsibility to fulfil their basic human right. Second, there is a justice gap between what poor people in developing countries can claim as a matter of justice and what we are obliged, as a matter of justice, to sacrifice. So, in the end we are demanded to offer humanitarian aids only. In the second half, I develop the three problems I find with Miller’s arguments.
2. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Martha C. Beck The Veneer of Barbarism: Ignoring the Insights of Ancient Wisdom in the Era of Globalization
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This paper tries to show that the insights of Ancient Greek wisdom are still relevant today and can provide guidance, as we move toward what seems to be a historically unique, complex network of interrelationships between human beings all over the world and between human society and the natural world. The paper focuses on only two of the deities of the Olympian pantheon: Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and Ares, god of war, the extreme attraction they feel toward each other, and their relationships to the other de-ities and to human beings. Like all the deities, each of them can be either sacred and motivate human beings to noble achievements or they can drive individuals and societies to self-destruction. The lessons implied in the Iliad and myths apply to international development today. We seem to be creating a world of consumers who seek material comfort and wealth, worshipping Aphrodite without noticing she will always bring Ares with her: faction and conflict within and between nations. We are making the mistakes the Greeks thought most obvious and dangerous.
3. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Purushottama Bilimoria Globalisation: Good, Bad, and the Ugly Casualties of Indian Liberalisation: A Postcolonial Perspective
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There is a lot of talk around about Globalisation and its mana-like benefits; indeed, there are many, in areas such as the spread of communication capabilities, social media, and wider distribution of goods in the free trade marketplace that in previous decades were ‘protected’ by exorbitant excise tariffs, licensing restrictions, and low turn-overs. Since Weber, Robertson, Wallerstein, Appadurai, Tambiah et al, there has been much theorizing on the inevitability of Globalisation and its neat corollaries, Free Trade, Liberalisation, Parallel Modernities, and Economic Rationalism. Yet, Globalisation has both its protagonists and antagonists alike. The paper focuses on case studies from the Indian-end, impelled by the question: in what ways has Globalisation benefited and hurt India’s economy, the slow growth and periodic stagnation of its capabilities, the stability of the nation and its people? As part of the reciprocal deal on Liberalisation, Free Trade agreement has enabled myriads of TNCs with to reign in large Western capital-investment and start-up industrial bases (within a set percentage of ‘Indian-vested’ collaborations), which have undoubtedly helped push India to becoming the third largest world economy. However, the encroachments of TNCs and their impact on agro-economics, biodiversity, the plight of farmers, the further disenfranchisement of numerically small from a share in the national weal, the uneven regional deliverance from poverty, malnutrition, the disproportionate gender-ratio, rural illiteracy among the neglected, and other fall-outs, have worried critics of India’s ‘easy ride’ on the highway of Globalisation. The arguments will be developed extensively with illustrations.
4. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Germán Bula Cyborgs vs. Zombies: A Spinozist Ethology of Empire
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The following text attempts to map today’s biopolitical landscape in the form of an ethology: based on Hardt & Negri’s Empire and Deleuze’s reading of the body in Spinoza, it describes the main sorts of bodies in cognitive capitalism in terms of their affects, that is, the ways in which a body can modify and be modified by other bodies. Corporations are described as a body that has a single affect (profit) and is capable of incorporating other bodies into its service by exacerbating a single affect (such as fear). Communication technologies are seen as transformative of bodies, enabling them to increase their number and kinds of affects, and to create networks of cooperation and altruism, as a counterpoise to the obsessive powers of single affects. Finally, the Earth is also treated as a body, and its biopolitical role is also examined.
5. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
René Ceceña The Common Topological Grounds of Modernity (15th-18th centuries) and Globalization
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The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of space in the building of Modern thought (taken to be a form of relationship of human knowledge with the world, built from the 15th to 18th centuries) and, on that basis, the foundation of geopolitical and geo-economic thought and practices that characterize what we now call globalization. It is in indeed on spatial forms of representation and understanding of reality, that signifies a rupture with the ontological orientation of Western premodern thought, that modern epistemology is developed making it possible for the West to think and engage the geopolitical and geo-economic appropriation of the Earth as a whole. I then sought in this work to account the process of constitution of Modernity that, on the basis of the fundamental quality of space and as, then, the organizer for the understanding of reality, operates the reconfiguration of the concept of space leading to the identification of the whole Earth with a homogeneous space, susceptible to the West of human habitation and appropriation.
6. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Long Cheng China Model in Globalization Process
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No matter from which perspective, the presentation of the China model is an important event in the process of globalization. Why can the Chinese model achieve its success? What problems has it encountered? How can it resolve the problems and keep its sustainable development? What effect will China model bring to the world? In my opinion, the Chinese success depends upon five decisive factors: the pragmatic theories, the authoritarian political system, the special market economic structure, the well-controlled and gradual opening-up policy and the hardworking people with a creative spirit. However, the Chinese development confronts several problems: for example, its cost is too high, some important relations have lost their balance, the reform of the political institution has lagged behind the economic reform, some countries feel nervous about China’s development, etc. To maintain its sustainability China must deal with five pairs of relations, including those between social justice and efficiency, political reform and economic reform, economic development and ecological protection, native culture and foreign culture, and between righteousness and benefit. Finally, improving the China model will be beneficial to the world development.
7. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Zaharia Clitan Globalization of Capabilities
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Globalization is a term so broad in its scope that there is an inherent issue in defining what it truly means. The word globalization lends itself to unlimited interpretations and one would be hard pressed to find a concordant definition amongst scholars, practitioners and every people. The following paper is an attempt at refining and clarifying the concepts of globalization following the antithetic curse/blessing separation and asking: Is globalization the “Good, the Bad or the Ugly?” In the second half of this essay there will be a focus on normative aspects with the help of the “Capability approach.”
8. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Ana Luiza da Gama e Souza Individual Freedom in the Economic Global Market: A Defense of a Liberty to Realize Choices
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Human life in contemporary society is extremely complex and there are various external factors that directly affect the realization in the individual ends. In this work I analyze the effects of the global market economy, manifested by a mode of production and distribution of goods and services in the form of a global network of economic relations, which involve people, transnational corporations and political and social institutions in moral sphere of people, affecting their choices and the realization of these choices. Individual freedom can be understand as a freedom to realize our choices in the environment of a global economic market, but it is still problematic in the sense that the choices of goods and services available in this market do not reflect individual choices, but a set of preferences standardized according to the market itself. In this paper I will reflect about the individual freedom in economic globalization pointing from the debate between Pettit and Berlin that social freedom advocated by Republican Petit can be satisfactory for a start.
9. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Bregham Dalgliesh Towards a Critique of Globalisation
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This presentation examines globalisation’s homogenising effects that negate the construction of a world in common, or mondialisation, which in turn is linked to the ineffectiveness of classic vitalistic criticisms of capitalism. The need to find an alternative critique that can also take into account the role of technology at the global level in transforming power relations is then addressed. To this end, globalisation is distinguished from liberalisation, internationalisation, modernisation and universalisation in terms of spatio-temporal deterritorialisation and its engine room of relations of power/technoscience. For this reason, the mode of critique of critical history is advocated because it seeks to make the will to know that drives technology conscious of itself as a problem. Critical history thus serves to illuminate the parallel changes in power relations that technology engenders and, secondly, to articulate their ambiguous effects on ethico-political subjects whose subjectivity is framed against relations of power/technoscience. On this understanding, critical history reveals the contingency of globalisation and acts as a hedge against it, or as a long-term investment in mondialisation.
10. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Chris Durante A Cosmopolitan Ethos
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In our current era of globalization many have turned toward theories of cosmopolitanism as a means of fostering a sense of global citizenship. Often such theories promote our shared humanity at the expense of our cultural diversity. Yet, as regions of the globe continue to diversify we need to search for ways in which these communities will be capable of engaging in inter-cultural and interpersonal pursuits without having to eschew or eradicate our differences in the process. Thus, this paper will argue for a re-conceptualized form of cosmopolitanism as an ethos that is capable of forging a middle ground between universalism and particularism by enabling individuals and communities to cultivate an open attitude toward that which is foreign and different without having to eschew their own cultural particularities or their partiality toward their own communities. Through an analysis and re-conceptualization of the ideas of “diaspora,” “proximity,” “partiality,” and the “foreign” it will be suggested that through our rootedness in particularity – our ability to be partial to particular persons and identify with particular places – we are capable of creating a sense of world citizenship on both interpersonal and intercultural levels.
11. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Miriam Farhi-Rodrig Global Migration en route to Global Citizenship or to Rights of Residency?
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I looked for a robust yet flexible modus vivendi for a decent society of migrants and citizens. My proposition for a modus vivendi is on two levels: political and residential. On the political level, I propose the implementation of a new form of citizenry within the new limited cosmopolitan space. On the residential level, I propose that governments of nation states, as much as possible, adopt the working procedures of the municipalities of global cities where migration is dense. Such procedures may pave the way to decently accommodate social and economic networks for the survival and even the flourishing of the legal and illegal residents of global cities in spite of the current reduced and rigid concept of citizenry. I, then, conclude that, just like at the genesis of home computers, during which children taught their parents how to master this new ghost that intruded their private space, municipalities of global cities have to teach their governments how to deal with the problem of migration that intrude the public space. As a result of this interaction, governments may legislate more flexible laws of citizenry in the newly transformed public space.
12. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Valentina Fedotova Globalization as Megatrend and Local Modernization Trends
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The talk is devoted to the problem of defining the concept of globalization and the nature of the globalization process. We criticize the tendency to speak about globalization without defining its nature first, and to reduce it to global issues, to issues of Environmental Philosophy, and to cultural and social homogenization. We characterize the First Globalization of the 19th century, interrupted by the World War I, and look into reasons why globalization had only restarted as late as the end of the 20th century. We specify the novel features of the Second Globalization. We expand on its significance as a megatrend and on how modernization lost its megatrend status. We show that there are numerous modernizations today, and that these modernizations are no longer the catch-up ones. They draw upon the cultural and ethnic specifics of their countries and stand out as local trends. We discuss the relationship between globalization and the afore-mentioned factors that tend to be mistaken for globalization itself.
13. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Leonid Grinin Sovereignty Transformation and Philosophy
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The process of globalization undoubtedly contributes to the change and reduction of the scope of state sovereign powers. We consider these transformations to be among the most important ones. However, the reduction of sovereignty is sometimes a destructive process, which leads to the disintegration of states and numerous human tragedies. Overall, in the globalization processes the speed of the destruction of old relations often exceeds the speed of the formation of the new ones. Thus, philosophy faces a challenge of comprehending the changes brought about by globalization in general and the tendency to reduction of sovereignty in particular. It is worth taking into account that the latter is a bilateral process. On the one hand, some factors (global financial flows, multinational corporations, global media empires, the Internet etc.) that fairly undermine the states’ sovereignty are strengthening; on the other hand, most states voluntarily limit the scope of their sovereignty including their rights to determine taxation rates, monetary emission, to use capital punishment etc. We argue that the factor of voluntary reduction of the scope of sovereignty appears to be of utmost importance though its basic trends vary greatly in different parts of world.
14. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Yuko Kamishima Achieving Global Justice through Business: A Rawlsian Philosophical Base
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In this paper, I explore the philosophical possibility of achieving global justice through business by elaborating and expanding on John Rawls’s idea of “social cooperation”. In recent years, the theory and practice of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) have been gaining the attention of both businesspeople and academics. CSR means that a corporation, apart from its profit-making activities, has a social responsibility to consider wider stakeholders’ interests. The common view of the nature of corporations is that they exist to make profits, and thus all that corporations have to do is to take responsibility on behalf of stakeholders in narrow sense, i.e., investors, creditors, customers, and employees. Nevertheless, the term here is “responsibility”, not “contribution”, and discharging responsibilities is more related to justice, while making contributions is more related to charity. Therefore, we can plausibly argue that the idea of CSR is about a corporation acting responsibly as a member of society to achieve social justice, even though the act of doing so may not further the corporation’s profits. I believe global CSR, once its Rawlsian ideal is understood and accepted, can become a strong and stable measure by which to achieve global justice in the contemporary world.
15. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Elvira Leontyeva Transformation of the Role of Higher Education under Globalization
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This article considers transformation of role and functions of higher education in the frame of global education space. It underlines that education as an instrument and a result of globalization at the same time sustains interregional misbalances and supports formation of inter-university mega-complexes. A country’s position in university ratings defines its prestige and it is notable that such integration is also dividing. Conclusion states that in the global education space we can see processes that reflect world balance of political power; therefore, they can serve as an instrument not only of political analysis, but also of control.
16. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Vyacheslav Mantatov Sustainable Development Strategy as a Post-capitalist Project of Globalization
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Many misunderstandings and ambiguities of the conception of sustainable development are connected to its interpretation in terms of a dominant neoliberal ideology – ideology of corporate capitalism. We consider the sustainable development strategy as a post capitalist project of a new global civilization replacing the world capitalist system. Three basic elements form the project’s foundation: first, paradigm of the dialogue between philosophical cultures; second, noosphere socialist conception; third, the idea of universal progressivism. Sustainable development is comprehensive and universal (social, economic, ecological, moral) progress of humankind at the expenses of noosphere or intellectual potential, but not at the expenses of nature. In this sense, the strategy for sustainable development can be considered as universal noosphere progressivism. We propose to consider the strategy of sustainable development as a global civilization project providing an inclusive security on a planetary scale, returning a human civilization to harmony with nature and at the same time providing ascending to a stage of higher quality of life and a higher level of creative evolution of the world. One of the main ways and means of ascending is a nonviolent moral revolution on a planetary scale.
17. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Charles Romain Mbele Is it “Nonsense” for Africa to Search a Place in the Modern World?
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Drawing on the philosophy of F. Rosenzweig, and against the philosophy of history of Hegel, certain African thinkers currently argue that it is futile for Africans to seek to create a place in modernity. This is because these thinkers understand that modernity is based on the principal economic profit (principe du rendement) and build on the rejection of Africa. Due both to historical and contemporary quotidian practices, it is therefore vain for Af-ricans to seek to accede to modernity; they therefore must assume their a-historicity, marginality, and historical weakness, notably in refusing the mastery of the world through technoscience. The goal of this exposé is to explain and critique these arguments that deny African historicity and instead to propose a counter-model based on the contributions Du Bois, Garvey, Nkrumah, Diop, and Towa.
18. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Geeta Mehta Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi in the Context of Globalization
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Globalization is the process of enhancing collective measures to prevent international violence and wars to save global environment and to eliminate economic inequality through developed communications, investments, trade and aid. Gandhi cautioned humanity “to desist in this mad desire to destroy distance and time to increase animal appetites and go to the end of the earth in search of their satisfaction.” Globalization for Gandhi is civilizational process, not a civilizing one. Three basic Gandhian agenda such as Swadeshi, (self-sufficiency), Trusteeship and Bread labour are taken up to examine the fate of such values in the process of globalization. The Gandhian or Sarvodaya social order is characterized by an individual reformation-oriented personality-structure; values of nonviolence oriented cultural structure and altruistic social structure. What Gandhi left is a well-deliberated vision of an organically sound, mutually supportive and respecting independent world order. Gandhi saw the un-sustainability of the western model of development. Gandhi’s writings provide a detailed vision of an alternative model of development and the way to achieve it. The basic points in Gandhian alternative are fraternity, and frugality. The human nature is capable of radical reorientation, all one needs is a will to explore his own true self. Even if none of Gandhi’s ideas work, his critique of modernity will survive.
19. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Michael Reder Social Role of Religions and Global Justice: Political Philosophy and the Discourse about Post-secular Societies
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The discourse over secularization has undergone a pronounced change. In this context the debate over the social role of religions in post-modern societies started again about ten years ago and is still going on. This debate is also underway in political theory and political philosophy. Authors like Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer and Gianni Vattimo are key players in this debate. On the one hand, liberals such as Rorty tend to reduce religions to the private sphere. On the other hand, a post-secular model has developed over the last decade. Habermas is probably the most well-known of these academics. In his view, deliberative democracy needs sources for motivation as an antidote, and religions could provide such a moral resource. The paper wants to explore this discourse about the social role of religion. This analysis will focus on the contribution of religions to the debate on (global) justice. It will be argued, that religions could be interpreted as comprehensive social practices. More precisely, religions can be regarded as cultural practices through which people live and interpret their lives. The common characteristic of all religions is that they establish a comprehensive practice that enables discussion and reflection on a transcendent dimension of reality. In plural societies, in which different forms of reasons play an important role, religions as social practices could be one important social factor, especially when we are reflecting about the sources of global justice.
20. Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 51
Ritums Rozenbergs Notes on the Social Philosophy of Globalization
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The current report is devoted to comprehending some of the tendencies and phenomena in the global social space that are related to modern technology and its influence on communication and the existential forms of global society in general. The issue of the hierarchy of global society is brought into focus, mainly in terms of who dictates the rules: modern technologies, their creators, or their users? Do the various forms of communication change, and do spirituality and emotional response give way to rationalism and pragmatism? Whether the drive and determining force behind the global society is represented by capital, multinational corporations, global markets, or a financial oligarchy, or whether an important place is also occupied alongside these factors by those gifted personalities who are able to understand the necessities of the global society and are able to realize their ideas?