Solicitations

As the title of this companion set of essays in ethics to Modernities: Histories, Beliefs, and Values published at the same time, the expression soliciting is used more particularly than in ordinary everyday usage. For the most part solicitation here means a person or a group of persons seeking to obtain not just something generally. Specifically, solicitation here means persons seeking especially some fundamental ethical recognition in their evident destitution by entreating other persons both to recognize and to act upon their shared humanity. This more particular sense of solicitation corresponds to the now globalized awareness of very great numbers of persons today still continuing to suffer not just from poverty but from extreme poverty or destitution. Despite however the general decrease in the number of persons suffering from poverty, the number of those suffering from destitution has, as Essay Three documents in detail, largely remained stable. That is, the nature of the situations of very many persons persists in soliciting the moral and ethical effective concern of almost all. Responding not inappropriately to such solicitations in sufficient measure however would seem to require second thoughts about the nature of human beings and persons as fundamentally contingent beings. Such responses moreover would also seem to insist on distinguishing sharply between the moral and the ethical, between roughly what is mainly a matter of obligation and what is mainly a matter of value. Trying to understanding these matters less generally is the main point of the introductory and concluding essays about situations in Japan and the Sudan outside the more usual range of Western European reflection, together with the pairs of essays gathered in each of the three sections below.The author:Peter McCormick is Fürst Franz Josef and Fürstin Gina Emeritus Professor of Ethics at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. He is former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, and is a member of the Institut international de philosophie (Paris) and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Canada. In the libri nigri he published the books Blindly Seeing. Essays in Ethics: Discourses, Sayings, Sufferings and In Times Like These. Essays in Ethics: Situations, Resources, Issues.

ContentsPrefaceEssay I: Orientations:Community in the EU and in JapanIntroductionsAn Elementary ContrastSome Buddhist BackgroundsSteps on a Shin Buddhist PathConcluding Remarks: Renewing European PhilosophicalReflection on CommunityEndnotesPart One: Moral SolicitationsEssay II: Poor No More?Problems with Sustainable DevelopmentOrientationsSome Basic Terms and DistinctionsDevelopment Goals and Eradicating Extreme PovertyA Global Philosophy of DevelopmentDifficulties with Development and SustainabilityAn Economic and Philosophical Alternative?An Eco-Ethical PerspectiveBy Way of ConcludingEndnotesEssay III: Poverty and Anti-Poverty in France TodayOrientationsFrance and the Challenge of Eradicating Extreme PovertyFrom Monetary Poverty to a Poverty of DestinyThe 2018 French Anti-Poverty ProgrammeA Fresh Start?The French Anti-Poverty Programme and Its PresuppositionsBy Way of ConcludingEndnotesPart Two: Symbolic DiscoursesEssay IV: Human Beings and Symbolic BehaviorsOrientationsCardinal TermsMaterial HistoriesLinguistic CommunicationsSymbolic BehaviorsThe Basic Property of Language's Triple FrameworkConcluding RemarksEndnotesEssay V: Persons and Symbolic DiscourseOrientationsSymbols and Full Linguistic CapacityBackgroundsLanguage's Symbolic CharacterNot Synthesis but ComplementarityAlternative Elements of Symbolic DiscourseThe Nature of the Verbal SymbolEnvoi: Full Human Linguistic CapacitiesEndnotesPart Three: Ethical LimitsEssay VI: Ethics versus Moral Philosophy?Orientations"Ethics" vs "Moral Philosophy"?Philosophical Ethics"What Can [Moral] Philosophy Contribute to Ethics?"EndnotesEssay VII: Ethical Limits: Resting on NightRenewing Philosophical Ethics TodayInterpreting A Poetry of SufferingInterpretation and RationalityThe Force of the NegativeMetaphysical SpaceEnvoi: The Dark Borders of EthicsEndnotesEssay VIII: Ethics and DestitutionOrientationsDarfur YesterdayRecollectionDeliveranceSharingTransferringRealizingActualizingEnvoiEndnotes