Publications

Is VR a tool of liberation? addressing the ethics of VR through sociohistorical contextualization
Maurice Weller
Ethics and Information Technology, February 2026

This paper addresses the ethics of VR through sociohistorical contextualization. It integrates social science literature about the context of VR’s original conceptualization, which has so-far been neglected in philosophy. Situating VR in this way reveals that the context and much of the discussions surrounding it are deeply shaped by different varieties of techno-utopian ideologies. The paper distinguishes two strands of this techno-utopianism relating to VR, one being humanist and regarding VR as fostering communication and empathy, the other one being transhumanist, envisioning it as enabling us to overcome human limits and scarcity. The philosophical case for these utopianisms is distilled as consisting in an ideal of immediacy and abundance. These concepts are systematically evaluated from a Hegelian perspective.

Explication as a Basis for Conceptual Pluralism
Georg Brun
Inquiry, Februar 2026

It is generally recognized that there is no such thing as the correct explication of a given concept, but only one or more adequate explications. This paper addresses two questions: In what ways can there be more than one solution to a task of explication? And in what sense and under what conditions can diverse solutions give rise to conceptual pluralism? Based on an analysis of the general structure of explications, I first develop a systematic overview of the factors that may be responsible for diverse outcomes in a task of explication. I then suggest conditions under which it is plausible to interpret diverse outcomes as giving rise to explication-based pluralism. The rest of the paper discusses various ways in which explications can actually lead to explication-based pluralism.

“The lord a lord, the minister a minister, the father a father, the son a son.”
Roles and virtues in Plato, Aristotle, the Mencius and the Xunzi
Richard King
Meiner, 2025

Wie hängen Rollen und Tugenden zusammen? Obwohl es keine neue Erkenntnis ist, dass in der frühen chinesischen politisch-ethischen Literatur über Rollen diskutiert wird, sind diese in der praktischen Philosophie Platons und Aristoteles’ bislang nicht ausreichend gewürdigt worden. Diese Studie bietet eine detaillierte Untersuchung je zweier frühchinesischer und zweier antiker griechischer Texte und argumentiert, dass die spezifisch rollenbezogenen Tugenden sowohl in Platons »Politeia« als auch in Aristoteles’ »Nikomachischer Ethik« sowie bei Mencius und bei Xunzi strukturell grundlegend sind.
Während Platon und Aristoteles vor allem den Begriff »ergon« verwenden, um Rollen zu erfassen und zu definieren, bedienen sich Mencius und Xunzi hierfür der Riten (li). Eine grundlegende Gemeinsamkeit aller untersuchten Texte besteht darin, dass Rollen und Tugenden im Zusammenhang mit Herrschaft, dem Haushalt und den Künsten diskutiert werden. Einleitend werden fünf Merkmale von Rollen und ihren Tugenden herausgearbeitet: Erstens sind Rollen notwendig für das gute Leben, zweitens haben sie stets einen Träger und sind, drittens, plural – niemand hat also je nur eine einzige Rolle inne. Dies führt viertens dazu, dass verschiedene Rollen sich gegenseitig bedingen und auch im Konflikt miteinander stehen können. Und fünftens sind Rollen davon abhängig, erworben worden zu sein und danach nicht wieder eingebüßt zu werden.
Diese fünf Merkmale dienen der Studie als flexible Struktur, um die verschiedenen Auffassungen von Rollen und der ihnen zugehörigen Tugenden in den Texten von Platon, Aristoteles, Mencius und Xunxi zu analysieren und sich der Antwort auf die Frage, was in dem jeweiligen antiken oder frühchinesischen Text mit »Rolle« gemeint sein könnte, zu nähern. Denn freilich gibt es in diesen Texten keinen Begriff, der dem hier im philosophischen Sinne verwendeten und eng mit dem Guten verbundenen Begriff der »Rolle« entspricht. An verschiedenen Stellen findet sich sogar das, was King als »extreme These« bezeichnet: Dass der Träger der Rolle gleichsam die Rolle ist – und nichts anderes.

Patterns of Evil in Ancient Chinese and Greek Philosophy
Edited by Richard King and Pavlos Kontos
Routledge, 2025

The roots of evil are often held to be Biblical, but philosophers in ancient China and Greece were thoroughly conversant with both the phenomena and the languages of evil. This volume provides a comparative examination of patterns of evil in ancient Chinese and Greek philosophy.

With no genealogical connections to rely on, the comparativist must establish a framework to connect these traditions. This volume utilizes the notion of "patterns" to address worries of methodological and ethical incommensurability, and to show what this means for the practice of comparative philosophy. In the case of evil, this methodology requires diving deep into the linguistic and political murk where evil lurks, with its deep roots in human dispositions for experience and action. The nine chapters are arranged in two parts. Those of Part I are written by scholars with a strong background in comparative philosophy and offer a substantial analysis of how both traditions respond to a specific aspect of the phenomenology of evil. Those of Part II are “twinned” chapters, that is, chapters that discuss similar topics in close dialogue with one another, but each does it from within either of these traditions. The volume is concluded with a reflection on the varieties of comparative strategies employed in the nine chapters.

Patterns of Evil in Ancient Chinese and Greek Philosophy will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in comparative philosophy, ancient Greek philosophy, early Chinese philosophy, and the problem of evil quite generally.

The Normativity of Friendship
Anna Goppel
The Monist, April 2025

It is widely accepted that friendship affects the evaluation of our behavior. In virtue of friendship, acts and omissions may be variously allowed, forbidden, required, or otherwise considered better or worse. Typically it is taken for granted that such changes concern the moral evaluation of our behavior. This paper challenges this assumption. I argue that friendship involves nonmoral duties of benevolence, and is thus governed by a distinct normativity that includes moral and nonmoral duties. In this respect friendship alters the normative evaluation of our behavior, but not the moral evaluation. Such an understanding, I argue, accounts better than its purely moral alternative for how we think about important phenomena related to friendship, and can be well explained theoretically.