Katharina Bauer

This paper investigates the moral significance of identity-related risks in climate change adaptation. It will engage with Laura García-Portela’s discussion of non-economic loss and damage in Rectifying Climate Injustice to identify non-economic losses that can accompany efforts to maintain or transform ways of life. Based on a distinction between adaptation aiming at mere survival and resilient adaptation that maintains essential functions and identities, criteria for identifying some risks to identity as intolerable moral risks are suggested (loss of core agential capacities, general impairment of the capacity to value objectives and to maintain a coherent normative outlook). The identification of intolerable moral risks underlines the gravity of non-economic losses and the moral obligation to provide adequate reparation. Finally, the implications for adequate responses to the entailed loss and damage through symbolic reparation, political repair, and active transformation are discussed.

Kant introduces a duty to oneself to respect oneself and to avoid servility – or notto make oneself a worm. I argue for a wider understanding of this duty: Persons ought to respect their own dignity as persons with autonomy, rationality, and morality (A), but also as personalities, who embody dignity and live a dignified life (B). A corresponds to Kant’s concept of duty as the necessity of an action done out of respect for the moral law, B is an obligation arising from the practical necessity that follows from one’s self-understanding as an individual personality in a socio-cultural context. A and B relate to two types of dignity that are discussed in current debates. I argue that both types of dignity are equally relevant for understanding and respecting one’s own dignity. Finally I discuss why, even though persons can behave like worms, others ought not to step on them.

Cover -- Titel -- Vorwort -- Inhaltsverzeichnis -- 1.,Hier stehe ich...' -- Ausgangspunkte und Vorgehensweise -- 2. Praktische Notwendigkeit? -- Abgrenzungen und Einordnungen -- 2.1 Die Behauptung, etwas tun zu müssen -- 2.2 Eine widersinnige Terminologie? -- 2.3 Abgrenzung von Zwangshandlungen, Automatismen und vom Zwang durch Sanktionen -- 2.4 Frei-sein-wollen-Müssen und Anders-handeln-Können -- 3. Romantische und andere Notwendigkeiten -- Leitmotive -- 3.1 Romantische Notwendigkeiten -- Ein besonderes Gewicht -- 3.2 Ein individuelles Gesetz? -- Ein Ringen um Ganzheit.

In this letter to our German colleagues we describe the situation, mentality, and organization of academic philosophy in the Netherlands in comparison to Germany. We proceed in five acts. In the first act, A wide beach, we set the stage and introduce the two academic landscapes; in the second act, Between controversy and frontal teaching, we compare the Dutch and German academic temper and practices. In the third act, Flat land, flat hierarchies, we parallelize the geography of the Netherlands and the organizational structure of Dutch universities. In the fourth act, Philosophers among merchants, we discuss the positive and negative sides of the liberal, transparent, competitive and progress-oriented spirit of Dutch academic philosophy. In the fifth and final act, Philosophy from the pragmatic point of view, we conclude what we can learn from our Dutch neighbours: We plea for a non-elitist, down to earth, straight-forward, and open-minded way of doing philosophy, where one is neither shying away from controversy nor too shy to come down from the ivory tower and mingle with the audience.

"Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders." - Die Erfahrung, etwas notwendig tun zu mussen oder auf keinen Fall tun zu konnen, ist immer eine Entdeckung uber einen selbst. Eine solche praktische Notwendigkeit kann gerade angesichts zunehmender Freiheitsspielraume in modernen liberalen Gesellschaften nicht nur als Einschrankung der eigenen Freiheit wahrgenommen werden. Sie kann auch eine Erfahrung personlicher Grenzen darstellen, in denen sich die eigene Identitat sinnvoll bestimmen lasst. Diese personlichen Grenzen konnen nicht uberschritten werden, ohne sich selbst aufs Spiel zu setzen, zu verlieren oder radikal neu zu erfinden. Ausgehend von der Spannung zwischen personlicher und moralischer Notwendigkeit untersucht Katharina Bauer, wie der individuelle Anspruch auf Ubereinstimmung mit dem eigenen Selbstverstandnis zu universalen Anspruchen ethischer Prinzipien und moralischer Regeln steht.

It has recently been pointed out that the cloudiness of the concept of authenticity as well as inflated ideologies of the ‘true self’ provide good reasons to criticize theories and ideals of authenticity. Nevertheless, there are also good reasons to defend an ethical ideal of authenticity, not least because of its critical and oppositional force, which is directed against experiences of self-abandonment and self-alienation. I will argue for an elaborated ethical ideal of authenticity: the ambitious ideal of a continuous self-reflective process of ‘self-authentication’. For this purpose, the ideal of being authentic in expressing and unfolding one’s individual personality and characteristics will be combined with the ideal of being ‘an authentic person’ - whereby ‘a person’ is to be understood in a Kantian sense as an autonomous person who is reasonable and morally responsible.

In today’s highly dynamic societies, moral norms and values are subject to change. Moral change is partly driven by technological developments. For instance, the introduction of robots in elderly care practices requires caregivers to share moral responsibility with a robot (see van Wynsberghe 2013 ). Since we do not know what elements of morality will change and how they will change (see van der Burg 2003 ), moral education should aim at fostering what has been called “moral resilience” (Swierstra 2013 ). We seek to fill two gaps in the existing literature: (i) research on moral education has not paid enough attention to the development of moral resilience; (ii) the very limited literature on moral resilience does not conceptualise moral resilience in relation to new technological developments. We argue that philosophical accounts of moral education need to do justice to the importance of moral resilience, and that a specific form of moral resilience should be conceptualised as “technomoral resilience” to underline the added value of cultivating moral resilience in relation to technomoral change. We illustrate the role of technomoral resilience in practice by looking at the context of elderly care. To make the first step towards an account of how technomoral resilience can be fostered in moral education, we propose that moral education shall focus on a triangle of capacities: (1) moral imagination, (2) a capacity for critical reflection, and (3) a capacity for maintaining one’s moral agency in the face of disturbances.