Taking as the background the discourses on friendship initiated by ancient Confucian and Greek philosophers, this article is focused on Xunzi’s perspective on friends by examining where and how he engages effectively ethical justifications of friendship. It will be argued that although Xunzi shows a kind of consistency with Confucius and Mencius, he comes to justify friendship through his own deliberations on human nature, on learning and education, and on the nature and function of human community. We will then proceed to examine the three perspectives Xunzi takes to highlight the ethical value of friends: friendship can be justified as it is needed in overcoming the inborn tendencies towards competition and strife; friendship can be justified because it is taken as supplementary to learning and education where friends are made equivalent to teachers in terms of moral influence and exemplary models; friendship can be justified because it is necessary for communities to function well and for individuals to lead a good life. We will finally come to the conclusion that these justifications constitute a unique ethics of friendship, which is not only significantly divergent from Greek propositions on friends but also differentiable, one way or another, from those proposed or presumed by Confucius and Mencius, and that the Xunzian philosophy of friendship is still an invaluable resource for us to draw on in the age of globalisation and de-globalisation.

Academics working on animal welfare typically consider the animal's affective state (eg the experience of pain), biological functioning (eg the presence of injuries), and sometimes naturalness (eg access to pasture), but it is unclear how these different factors are weighed in different cases. We argue that progress can be informed by systematically observing how ordinary people respond to scenarios designed to elicit varying, and potentially conflicting, types of concern. The evidence we review illustrates that people vary in how much weight they place on each of these three factors in their assessments of welfare in different cases; in some cases, concerns about the animal's affective state are predominant, and in other cases other concerns are more important. This evidence also suggests that people's assessments can also include factors (like the animal's relationship with its caregiver) that do not fit neatly within the dominant three-circles framework of affect, functioning and naturalness. We conclude that a more complete understanding of the multiple conceptions of animal welfare can be advanced by systematically exploring the views of non-specialists, including their responses to scenarios designed to elicit conflicting concerns.

As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay focuses on the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change from a perspective that emphasizes the importance of a wide spectrum of human emotions to better understand the less quantifiable but nevertheless important conditions for being able to sustain initiatives for peaceful change. It aims to throw light on the often overlooked psychological and emotional hurdles standing in the way of agents’ ability to undertake and sustain action designed to lead to peaceful change. To do so, the essay returns to the pioneering work of Ernst Haas and his important concept of “spillover.” The essay shows that the neofunctional understanding of spillover was a theoretically important innovation, but that it was missing three essential elements: an understanding of the need for positive emotions and ontological security; an understanding of the link between values and identity; and a realization of the importance of a shared vision for the “good life.” To illustrate the problems with Haas's version of spillover, but also to highlight the significant potential of the theory, the essay turns to the crisis of the liberal international order as an example of a forum where the agency to undertake peaceful change seems to be faltering. The essay concludes that the ability of the liberal order to effect peaceful change is currently hampered because the order is characterized by negative emotions, contested values, and a vision of the good life that is seen as mainly a benefit for the cosmopolitan elite.

Contra John Rawls, G. A. Cohen argues that the fundamental principles of justice are not constrained by the limits of our nature or the nature of society, even at its historical best. Justice is what it is, even if it will never be realized, fully or at all. Likewise, David Estlund argues that since our innate motivations can be justice-tainting, they cannot be a constraint on the right conception of justice. Cohen and Estlund agree that if the attempt to implement a certain conception of justice is likely to result in widespread harm or injustice, then it should not be implemented, but that this does not entail that the conception itself is false. I argue that (i) there is no way to judge the soundness of a principle of justice independently of all psychological facts, and the effects that the principle is likely to have if it is implemented; (ii) a principle of justice that, if implemented, makes it hard or impossible for individuals committed to justice to lead happy and worthwhile lives, even if the circumstances are favorable to living justly, cannot be sound; (iii) without the constraints noted in (i) and (ii), there can be no reason to reject racist, sexist, or other wrongheaded principles of justice that have been advanced as sound over the years, principles that even Cohen and Estlund would reject. In short, justice is justice only if kept within the limits of human nature.

Like all scientific innovations, nutrigenomics develops through a constant interplay with society. Normative assumptions, embedded in the way researchers formulate strands of nutrigenomics research, affect this interplay. These assumptions may influence norms and values on food and health in our society. To discuss the possible pros and cons of a society with nutrigenomics, we need to reflect ethically on assumptions rooted in nutrigenomics research. To begin with, we analysed a set of scientific journal articles and explicated three normative assumptions embedded in the present nutrigenomics research. First, values regarding food are exclusively explained in terms of disease prevention. Health is therefore a state preceding a sum of possible diseases. Second, it is assumed that health should be explained as an interaction between food and genes. Health is minimised to quantifiable health risks and disease prevention through food–gene interactions. The third assumption is that disease prevention by minimisation of risks is in the hands of the individual and that personal risks, revealed either through tests or belonging to a risk group, will play a large role in disease prevention. Together, these assumptions suggest that the good life (a life worth living, with the means to flourish and thrive) is equated with a healthy life. Our thesis is that these three normative assumptions of nutrigenomics may strengthen the concerns related to healthism, health anxiety, time frames and individual responsibilities for health. We reflect on these ethical issues by confronting them in a thought experiment with alternative, philosophical, views of the good life.