This article develops a novel argument that God’s existence would greatly increase our prospects for meaning in life. The key idea is that if God exists, He stands in certain relations to the world that would confer value upon it. For instance, God would be its creator and sustainer. The world would thus gain value in much the way that relics gain value by their links with historical persons and events. And crucially, as a result of this infusion of value, our lives go better because the things we engage with matter more.

This paper constructs the intellectual histories of learned societies in Ghana to illuminate African agency in pursuing knowledge production and dissemination. Academics and politicians founded some of Africa’s first scientific societies in Ghana. Previous scholarship on scientific research and higher education in Africa has overlooked the role of disciplines-based learned societies and national academies. This paper contributes to that literature using a historical comparative approach to construct the histories of learned societies that emerged during the colonial and postcolonial periods to understand how such scientific associations contributed to research productivity. I advance two arguments based on case studies of three scientific societies. First, there is linearity in the evolution of learned societies. Second, the institutionalization of scientific communities along interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary lines provided flexibility and enabled learned associations to contribute relevant knowledge to the “developmental state” that the political leaders were constructing.

The 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP, and the demobilization of the latter, dismantled the governance structures in regions formerly under rebel control. Drawing from a relational security framework, this article explores how, across three case-studies, communities use their former experience of rebel governance as a framework through which they could express expectations and dissatisfaction with new types of order. This blueprint is also used to make specific demands to new or reconstituted armed groups and to take direct action to address governance gaps, reproducing and co-constructing order post-demobilization. However, we observe that both the organization of the community and the capacity and ideology of armed groups could also be limiting factors to the community’s reproduction of order post-demobilization. From a peacebuilding perspective, this means that there can be pressure from below in favor of remobilization, as a predictable insurgent order may be preferable to uncertainty.

This is a personal narrative of my stroke and recovery experience, and the medical, psychological, and social circumstances surrounding it.

In this paper, I argue that there is an inconsistency between the content of some of the labour-related human rights articulated in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the obligations ascribed to various actors regarding those rights in the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), in particular those ascribed to corporations. Recognizing the inconsistency, I claim, can help us see some of the moral limitations of both familiar public responses to exploitative labour practices and influential philosophical accounts of the wrong of exploitation. In light of these limitations, I argue that there are reasons to accept a more expansive account of the human rights-related obligations of corporations than that found in the UNGPs, and in particular that we should accept that corporations have obligations to actively contribute to lifting people out of poverty.

In considering Huo Tao’s Family Admonitions, a text included in a lineage genealogy of the early sixteenth century, this article investigates its five constituent logics (Confucian propriety, bureaucratic division of responsibility, subsistence agriculture, wealth creation, and punitive patriarchy). It explains what sorts of expert abilities Huo considered necessary and what relations of authority (defined as power over others that they accept) those abilities entailed. Huo’s plan relies not only on the expertise of lineage members, but also on the abilities of hired workers and bondservants/slaves who held their positions for a long time. Their positions gave them authority in the workspace over the lineage members who outranked them legally, calling into question the utility of simple categories of “social status.” Because the text was later copied repeatedly into other lineages’ compilations, Huo’s plan must have made sense to Ming and Qing lineage leaders, so it may illuminate how they constructed relations of authority and social status.

In 1775, during the process of collecting books for the Siku quanshu project, an empire-wide literary inquisition was imposed on the deceased monk Jinshi Dangui (1614–80). As the curious case of censorship developed, the trials not only diminished a major Cantonese monastic community and an old bannermen family but also inspired several imperially commissioned historiographical projects. Exploring the historical significance of the Dangui case at the nexus of early Qing Buddhist networks, Qing imperial control, and the politics of historical memory, this study unravels a multi-layered story of the posthumous censorship of Monk Dangui. It cross-examines a broad range of sources including imperial archives, gazetteers, biji, personal records, and literary anthologies to reconstruct a remarkable moment in High Qing censorship and to present a history of a displaced Buddhist community during the Ming–Qing transition; both became obscured after the Qianlong reconstruction of the imperial order.

This article primarily concentrates on the theoretical and intellectual dimensions of nature cure, particularly efforts to revive it during the second half of the nineteenth century. Little is known about specific medical professionals or theories concerning the Victorian philosophy of nature cure, although this philosophy is mentioned in general terms in studies on alternative medicine and hygiene. This article illuminates a Victorian nature cure philosophy through the works of Edward W. Lane (1823–1889). As a physician and hydropathist, Lane aspired to create a new form of medical system, ‘hygienic medicine’, seeking answers to the questions ‘What is disease?’ and ‘What is medicine?’ throughout his career. Lane was among many physicians interested in nature’s healing power during his time. However, few undertook as thorough a theorisation of nature cure philosophy as Lane did in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a period that presented unprecedented challenges in reconciling medicine with nature. This study explores the subtle nuances of the concepts that Lane actively used in his theoretical explanations, including ‘nature’, ‘laws of health’ and ‘vital force’, interpreting his efforts as a reconciliation between Romantic naturalism and laboratory medicine. The aim of this study is not to re-evaluate the significance of Lane’s medical theory itself. It rather uses Lane as a lens to reveal the intricacies of Victorian nature cure philosophy.

Algorithmic human resource management (AHRM), the automation or augmentation of human resources-related decision-making with the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled algorithms, can increase recruitment efficiency but also lead to discriminatory results and systematic disadvantages for marginalized groups in society. In this paper, we address the issue of equal treatment of workers and their fundamental rights when dealing with these AI recruitment systems. We analyse how and to what extent algorithmic biases can manifest and investigate how they affect workers’ fundamental rights, specifically (1) the right to equality, equity, and non-discrimination; (2) the right to privacy; and, finally, (3) the right to work. We recommend crucial ethical safeguards to support these fundamental rights and advance forms of responsible AI governance in HR-related decisions and activities.