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While a positive view of calling has been ubiquitous since its introduction into the literature over two decades ago, research remains unsettled about the extent to which it contributes to various aspects of the good life: an optimal way of living well via worthwhile endeavors. Further, scholars have identified two conceptual types of calling, marked by internal versus external foci; yet their differential impact on outcomes indicative of the good life, such as eudaimonic and hedonic well-being (characterized by the experience of purpose and meaning versus pleasure and happiness, respectively), is unknown. Through a meta-analysis of 201 studies, we provide the first systematic review focused on these two fundamental theoretical issues in the calling literature: how strongly related callings are to outcomes in the domains of work and life and which type of calling (internally or externally focused) more strongly predicts these outcomes, if either. We find that callings more strongly relate to outcomes indicative of the good life than recently argued. We further find that callings are more strongly linked to work than to life outcomes and to eudaimonic than to hedonic outcomes. The two types of calling converge in being associated with many similar outcomes, but they show some divergence: internally focused callings are more positively related to hedonic outcomes and less positively related to eudaimonic outcomes, relative to externally focused callings. This finding supports a view of callings as hierarchically structured, with a higher-order calling factor composed of two correlated yet distinct lower-order calling types. Integrating our meta-analytic findings with relevant literatures, we propose a theoretical model that addresses psychological and social need fulfillment through which different types of callings contribute to the good life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the problems with the problem of world order is that what makes for order within societies is often precisely what makes for disorderly relations between them. I argue in this short essay that many of the problems with the problem of world order arise from assumptions that are widely shared within a discipline where the language of power and interest dominates and where a view of states as "like units" permeates. With more emphasis on values and visions of the good life, and acceptance that the ontological foundation of IR is difference rather than sameness, the debates about the problem of world order would take on a different form. The essay adapts the work of Hedley Bull and introduces the concept of "resilience-governance" to distinguish between resilience as a practice of self-governance taking place within ordering domains and resilience as a practice of "diversity-governance" taking place between ordering domains. The combination of the two allows for a bifocal view into how practices of resilience as self-governance may produce order within individual domains but will at the same time increase diversity and difference between the ordering domains, hence making the practices of resilience as diversity-governance much more challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'In praise of disquiet' situates feminist-memoir writing as an embodied artistic process and argues that this form of writerly practice provides a method to work through affective individual and cultural experiences of 'snapping'; of breaking out and down; of refusing to carry on. I reflect on my own writing practice as a method of writing myself back together again in the aftermath of a feminist snap moment. I argue that the literary form of feminist-memoir is an empowering and critical tool that can be used to challenge the pervasive myth of living and working to achieve the impossibility of the good life. Feminist-memoir writing as literary method can be used to empower the writing–speaking subject and simultaneously critique and challenge the capitalist social codes, values, systems and institutions that have commingled to create the compounded stresses that so often lead to a snap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although literature and anthropology might seem an unlikely pair, their collaboration has been the subject of debate. As a theoretical endeavor, the present study aims to propose the fruitful collaboration between these two domains through the framework of litero-anthropological research. The results of such research disclose how fictional works once analyzed by means of anthropological criteria can be assigned to three levels of reading that are not only relevant to anthropology but also uncover the layers of meaning in literary narratives. For this purpose, a theoretical framework is formed that draws on Max Scheler’s exemplary person, Clyde Kluckhohn’s value and Edward Fischer’s the good life, the combination of which has not been analyzed collectively before. It was concluded that the analysis of a literary work by means of this framework opens a new gate to character analysis whereby literary critics can reveal how protagonists are portrayed as exemplary persons who promote a set of values through their discourse. Finally, the theory of the good life revealed if the set of values the protagonist upholds is conducive to attaining the good life. These values aim to reach beyond the world of fiction and meet the actual world of the readers.

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Abstract Wary of hate speeches and intolerant acts by leaders of radical groups and repeated terrorist attacks in Indonesia, in the second period of Joko Widodo’s presidency, two of these radical groups (HTI and FPI) are disbanded, their leaders apprehended and sentenced, and the terrorist cells are hunted and destroyed. The government launches a program of de-radicalization, using security and legal approaches. At the same time the Ministry of Religious Affairs realizes that these approaches are not sufficient, and promotes a program which is termed as ‘religious moderation’ in the form of a directive. The program is intended to neutralize religious radicalism through awareness of the religiously plural context of Indonesia, and the fact that all religions of Indonesia have accepted Pancasila as the state ideology. The three responses are on the whole appreciative toward this program, but raise critical remarks on some aspects of this program, which remind them of the totalitarian era of the past. Abstrak Dalam rangka mengatasi wacana kebencian, tindakan intoleran dan aksi-aksi teror dari kelompok-kelompok radikal di Indonesia, maka pada periode kedua dari pemerintahan presiden Joko Widodo (2019-2024), dua dari kelompok kelompok ini yaitu HTI dan FPI dibubarkan, pemimpin-pemimpinnya diadili dan dipenjarakan. Banyak sel-sel teroris diburu dan dihancurkan. Tindakan pemerintah ini dilakukan dalam rangka deradikalisasi. Namun Kementerian Agama RI menyadari bahwa pendekatan keamanan dan legal saja tidak mencukupi, oleh karena itu mereka mempromosikan program yang disebut ‘moderasi beragama’ dalam bentuk buku pedoman. Program ini bertujuan menetralisir radikalisme agama melalui kesadaran akan konteks kemajemukan agama dari Indonesia, dan fakta bahwa semua agama di Indonesia telah menerima Pancasila sebagai ideologi negara. Tiga tanggapan secara umum menyambut program ini, tetapi sekaligus memberi catatan-catatan kritis terhadap beberapa aspek dari program ini, yang dikhawatirkan dapat mengembalikan praktik labelisasi dan indoktrinasi yang bersifat wajib bagi semua dari masa Orde Baru.

How can work be a genuine good in life? I argue that this requires overcoming a problem akin to that studied by Marx scholars as the problem of work, freedom and necessity: how can work be something we genuinely want to do, given that its content is not up to us, but is determined by necessity? I argue that the answer involves valuing contributing to the good of others, typically as valuing active pro-sociality – that is, valuing actively doing something good for others. This makes work better in one way, and may even make work something we are genuinely glad to have in our lives. Contemporary philosophical thinking about good work tends to focus on how work can be good for the person doing it, by providing, for example, self-realization or social relationships, while underappreciating the special importance of valuing social contribution. People will typically only really want work if they want a part of their lives to be about the good of others. This also means that work may be a part of the best life, something we should take into account when discussing work-related policies and the desirability of a 'post-work' future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, efforts to promote entrepreneurship as a possible career path for Chinese university students have intensified alongside the implementation of the official campaign of "mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation" (大众创业, 万众创新, dazhong chuangye, wanzhong chuangxin). Based on semi-structured interviews and long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted at two Chinese elite universities, this article examines what motivates young Chinese to become entrepreneurs. It is argued that Chinese students imagine entrepreneurship as an alternative to ceaseless striving for high-paying jobs. They believe that becoming entrepreneurs will enable them to pursue their own interests, engage in meaningful projects, experience a life of excitement and variation, and become masters of their own time. This notion of the good life ties in with broader discourses of well-being that are currently proliferating among youth in urban China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although literature and anthropology might seem an unlikely pair, their collaboration has been the subject of debate. As a theoretical endeavor, the present study aims to propose a fruitful collaboration between these two domains through the framework of litero-anthropological research. The results of such research disclose how fictional works, once analyzed by means of anthropological criteria, can be assigned to three levels of reading that are not only relevant to anthropology but also uncover the layers of meaning in literary narratives. For this purpose, a theoretical framework is formed that draws on Max Scheler's exemplary person, Clyde Kluckhohn's value, and Edward Fischer's 'the good life', the combination of which has not been analyzed collectively before. It was concluded that the analysis of a literary work by means of this framework opens a new gate to character analysis whereby literary critics can reveal how protagonists are portrayed as exemplary persons who promote a set of values through their discourse. Finally, the theory of the good life revealed if the set of values the protagonist upholds is conducive to attaining the good life. These values aim to reach beyond the world of fiction and meet the actual world of the readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article tracks how a trope of middle-class household thrift, grounded on the autarchic Aristotelian oikos, has long fueled derogatory discourses in Britain aimed at low-income urban residents who practice quite different forms of thrift. Since the 1970s this trope has migrated across scales, proving a potent metaphor for national economic policy and planetary care alike, and morally and economically justifying both neoliberal welfare retraction compounded by austerity policies and national responses to excessive resource extraction and waste production. Both austerity and formal recycling schemes shift responsibility onto consumer citizens, regardless of capacity. Further, this model of thrift eclipses the thriftiness of low-income urban households, which emerges at the nexus of kin and waged labor, sharing, welfare, debt, conserving material resources through remaking and repair and, crucially, the fundamental need for decency expressed through kin care. Through a historicized ethnography of a London social housing estate and its residents, this paper excavates what happens as these different forms and scales of household thrift coexist, change over time, and clash. Ultimately, neoliberal policy centered on an inimical idiom of thrift delegitimizes and disentitles low-income urban households and undermines their ability to enact livelihood practices of sustainability and projects of dignity across generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces and explores two intersections between hope and whiteness: first, how various forms of hope alternately operate as discursive techniques that reproduce or resist whiteness; and second, whether theorists have warrant to hope for changes in whiteness itself. In order to prompt further study of both, I survey literature to propose seven dimensions for comparing forms of hope. I then apply this incipient typology of hopes to ethnographic evidence of white people who relocated to live in predominantly Black neighborhoods. I argue that their modes of hope transformed to become less agentic, less optimistic, and less conformed to white supremacist modes of hope. I close with a reflexive look at the place of hope in whiteness studies itself, pointing to two possible foundations of hoping for better future possibilities of whiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Love is considered a spiritual revolution or the most revolutionary event in the history of humanity, and in contemporary thought has become a form of humanism, as defined in the philosophy of Luc Ferry, where love seems to be a concept of survival that refers to the new humanity that embodiedits characteristics in the emergence of love as a new religion and the deification of man and made it the center of man. of the universe, through which heseeks to attain happiness and salvation from fears and to attain a good and calm life and to give it meaning despite the inevitable march towards death, in order to overcome the absurdity of life and its pain. Its branches, the extension of bridges of fraternity, synergy, compassion, containment and charity for coexistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although considerable research has examined the traits and features involved in living a good life (Baumeister et al. in J Posit Psychol 8(6):505–516, 2013; Ryan et al. in Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness, Guilford Press, 2006; Wong in Can Psychol/Psychol Can 52(2):69–81, 2011), little research has examined personal philosophies of the good life and the motivational outcomes associated with these views. Through a prospective longitudinal study across one academic year, we examined whether perceiving oneself to be living coherently with personal conceptions of the good life was associated with greater autonomous goal motivation and, subsequently, goal progress and greater subjective well-being (SWB) over time. We hypothesize that perceiving oneself as living coherently in terms of one's own philosophy of flourishing relates to greater volition, goal progress and happiness. Our results suggest that when individuals assess themselves as following their own philosophy of the good life, they tend to experience greater autonomous motivation, goal progress and SWB. Implications for personality coherence and Self-Determination Theory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GENDER: Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft is the property of Verlag Barbara Budrich GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This visual memoir probes the tensions and contradictions that inflect the commodity‐based relationship between a farmer and his cattle on an Irish farm. A methodological exploration of how to attend to the politics of care that animate multispecies relationships on the farm, this article examines relations of intimacy, care, and contradiction materialized in the structural manipulation of bodies for economic purposes. The attentive focus on the everyday encounters between John and his cattle unearths how affective and conflicting multispecies entanglements mediate the farming of animals for food through rhythms of care, the spirit of the gift, and the logic of sacrifice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can human life have value in a world in which humans are rendered obsolete by technological advances? This article answers this question by developing an extended analysis of the axiological impact of human obsolescence. In doing so, it makes four main arguments. First, it argues that human obsolescence is a complex phenomenon that can take on at least four distinct forms. Second, it argues that one of these forms of obsolescence ('actual-general' obsolescence) is not a coherent concept and hence not a plausible threat to human well-being. Third, it argues that existing fears of technologically-induced human obsolescence are less compelling than they first appear. Fourth, it argues that there are two reasons for embracing a world of widespread, technologically-induced human obsolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ethik in der Medizin is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Adab Al-Kufa is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It takes material as well as immaterial elements to have a good life. Among some upper middle-class Iranians, there is a growing interest in having a healthy lifestyle and increase one's quality of life to the extent that we can talk about a culture of health and wellbeing in which different rituals and body management practices are employed to help people follow their sense of the good life. This is studied in this paper from a "resource culture" perspective wherein resources are the means to create, sustain, and alter social relations, units, and identities within the framework of cultural ideas and practices. This paper examines how undertaking a new health-based lifestyle transforms people's social network, sense of identity, or group memberships, providing them with new opportunities to pursue what they think is the good life. Participants of the study include 30 members of a social media group named "Our keto Lives" in Tehran who were interviewed in two intensive, online focus group sessions. The result of the study indicates that as an increasingly popular dietary movement, Keto is capable of inspiring its followers to significantly change their life circumstances through a variety of body management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I emphasize that pastoral practice revitalizes the significance of spiritual life as an alternative way to negotiate the science of well-being. This article is written from the perspective of practical theology, which is framed as a way of "living well" in which it is doubtful for both the individual and community to fulfill the good life without spirituality. Such an approach entails a degree of a transformative and transcendent life created by new senses, attentions, knowledge, ontological understanding, and disciplines out of the experience of the triune God. This study responds to the vocation of practical theology according to Ruard Ganzevoort and Johan Roeland, who assert that, "In its focus on praxis, practical theology has evolved out of three historical different styles of theology with differing concepts of and methodological approaches toward praxis: pastoral theology, empirical theology, and public theology." They suggest that pastoral practice should be something that contributes to the culture of well-being and that the roles of spiritual life in the formation and reformation of the good life should be clarified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout their lives, human beings have been shadowed with existential queries such as “What is my purpose?” and “How should I reach that purpose?” These big questions arise in accordance with an assumption that a good life must be a purposeful life. However, the same questions often lead to dilemmatic disposition of following my own goal or following other ideals designed by institutions or even theories. This article elaborates humans’ tendencies to perceive themselves as a fixated part of and to lean their purpose of life on the so-called grand narratives. One of the narratives shows that humans’ purpose in life is rooted in the understanding of humans’ essence. Humans’ essence is here viewed in two aspects, that is, the ‘centered’ self and the ‘decentered’ self. However, these two aspects are not without consequences. The centered self understood in the light of Aristotle and Kant holds a bigger possibility of ignoring historical and cultural values which basically play the pivotal parts of a human being’s constitution. On the other hand, the decentered self understood in the light of Richard Rorty tends to heavily impact the clarity of the path the self along with its purposes. This article attempts to unfold the problems around human being’s ‘center’ and their implications to the concept of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient Chinese text the Zhuangzi raises a mix of epistemological, psychological, and conceptual challenges against the value and usefulness of philosophical disputation. But instead of advocating the elimination of philosophy, it implicitly embraces a broader conception of philosophy, the goal of which is to engage us to reflect on our limitations, question things we take for granted, and better appreciate alternative perspectives and possibilities. Philosophy thus understood is compatible with a variety of methods and approaches: fictions, jokes, paradoxes, spiritual exercises, argument, disputation, and so on. Philosophical practices, on this view, also pave the way for an open‐minded, adaptive and flexible way of living that is at the core of the Zhuangist good life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects an effort to speculate at the nexus between a collective consciousness in a capitalist society in the wake of apartheid, and the operations of a predominant pedagogy. I pose several questions in terms of the political imagination and its regulation by capitalist realism: what is the relation between the university, ideological reproduction, and the political imagination? Politically speaking, what can we claim in the name of the commons? I am interested in the theoretical nature of the State that is being contested, as well as the state of mind, where the word state implies a mental or emotional condition. Thinking with Lauren Berlant's work on cruel optimistic relations, as well as the educational philosophy of Paulo Freire and W.E.B. Du Bois, I speculate on the South African university's shared ideological complicities. I argue against its emphasis on the production of a subject that is in synch with the reproduction of capital, and well suited for insertion into its structures. This is evidence of the role universities plays in sustaining the enduring fantasy of "the good life." What magnetises the university's desire and fidelity to a certain mode of production, even when that mode proves painfully unsustainable? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines examples of indigenous conceptions of well-being and locally meaningful forms of community development in the Pacific and considers how these coincide, or collide, with development driven by the private sector. The focus is on indigenous communities who live in the vicinity of large multinational corporations, using case studies from Papua New Guinea and Fiji. We investigate how communities' perceptions of well-being intersect with the concept of development as it emanates from the private sector. In order to do this, we explore how communities perceive well-being, what materializes as being significant to its achievement, and what this means in the presence of international capital. Ultimately the purpose of investigating these concepts is to establish a point of reference for considering the effectiveness and value of corporate community development intervention from a community perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]