Jeong Dojeon 鄭道傳 (1342–1398) was one of the most important Neo-Confucian scholar-officials during the late Goryeo and early Joseon periods, not only as an architect of Joseon’s Confucian constitutional structure but also a revolutionary Neo-Confucian who spearheaded the founding of a new dynasty. This chapter examines the relationship between Neo-Confucianism and Jeong’s political radicalism by demonstrating how, despite his commitment to Mencian moral economy, Jeong could transform Neo-Confucianism, an otherwise abstract “Learning of Principle,” into a revolutionary political ideology devoted to the Public Way. Central to the chapter’s claim is that by undergoing the so-called Xunzian moment, which involved a painful recognition of the breakdown of moral economy, Jeong developed a renewed attention to righteousness, commonly regarded as a virtue regulating the ruler–ruled relationship, as a public and political virtue and principle by which to rebuild the public world in a way that could serve the people’s well-being effectively.

This chapter investigates how the moral framework constructed by Zhu Xi with regard to war affected his Neo-Confucian followers in Joseon during the seventeenth century when they confronted the Jurchens’ invasions of 1627 and 1636. Of special interest is how some of the Joseon scholar-officials, despite their full commitment to Neo-Confucianism, were able to justify making peace with the Jurchens, an option generally regarded as unreasonable and immoral. By examining Choe Myeonggil’s 崔鳴吉 (1586–1647) pro-peace argument, this chapter shows that it was by employing “the expedient” that Choe was able to strike a creative balance between righteousness as a universal moral principle, undergirding the Joseon–Ming relationship, and good political consequences, such as the preservation of the state and protection of the people’s well-being. Special attention is given to Choe’s emphasis on Joseon’s special moral status as a foreign vassal state and the “patriotic sentiments” it generated.

This chapter examines how Byeon Gyeryang 卞季良 (1369–1430) struggled to consolidate a nascent dynasty in the context of ritual hierarchy between Ming and Joseon. After the successful establishment of Joseon, Byeon insisted on continuing a ritual practice from the preceding dynasty that was generally regarded by the majority of the Korean ruling elites as deviating from “the standard” of the ritual that underpinned Sino-Korean relations. In Byeon’s view, the task of consolidating the new dynasty simultaneously required Korean public decision-makers to find a way to balance their Neo-Confucian subscription to the interstate moral hierarchy between Ming and Joseon and the latter’s Heaven-given mandate to protect its land and the people. This chapter investigates how Byeon attempted to achieve this balance through the use of “the expedient,” thereby encouraging the Joseon monarch to be fully responsible for the well-being of his people with a renewed commitment to the Mandate of Heaven.

This chapter presents the central claim of the book, arguing that sovereignty practices emerge at the confluence of struggles – on the one hand, by actors asserting the political authority over a specific territory and, on the other hand, through resistance to this move by actors pursuing accountability and the responsibilisation of sovereign actors. I claim that practices of political authority – expressed through effective rule over territory – are central, constitutive acts of world politics, entailing specific obligations. Broadening the study of sovereignty practices beyond state relations, I argue that understanding how specific actors such as international organisations act as sovereign actors opens up new perspectives on international accountability and obligations in world politics.

Two of Leviathan’s most notable departures from earlier versions of Hobbes’s political theory are its introduction of a concept of “authorization” to describe the relation between subjects and their sovereign, and a vast expansion of Hobbes’s treatment of Judeo-Christian doctrine, history, and ecclesiology in Parts III and IV. The chapter argues that with his innovation of the idea of authorization in Leviathan, Hobbes unintentionally introduces an antinomy of reason into his political philosophy. Hobbes expanded his treatment of revealed religion because he viewed it as an important source of political instability. He deployed several philosophical distinctions to show that moral responsibility for wrongful action done only in obedience to one’s sovereign’s command lies with the sovereign who wills the performance of the action rather than with the merely obedient subject through whose instrumentality the action occurs. Leviathan’s novel doctrine of authorization, imagining subjects each “to own and acknowledge himself to be author of whatsoever” the sovereign “shall act or cause to be acted” (17.13), aimed to insulate the sovereign from subjects’ criticism of its wrongful commands/actions by shifting responsibility onto subjects. After considering the antinomy generated by Hobbes’s introduction of the concept of authorization, the chapter proposes a resolution.

This chapter is an interview with Erle Ellis and the book editors. It begins by considering Professor Ellis’s work on how humans have long been transforming ecosystems, and how these can be understood as producing anthropogenic biomes, or anthromes. It then discusses how the planetary boundaries, and novel entities in particular, are framed as part of broader narratives of crisis. These planetary narratives are discussed for how they assign responsibility, and the ways that they often do not. It offers an alternate view of understanding the multiple scales through which societies are, and have long been, entangled with their environments. By understanding both longer histories of human–Earth interactions and different scales of entanglement, the focus on ‘novelty’ as it arises in the planetary boundaries framework is set aside for a focus on relationships of how different societies and cultures affect, and are affected by ecological systems.

Limiting depletion of stratospheric ozone is painted as a global success story: one of exemplary human cooperation. I approach the ozone boundary as an object of colonization, and weave an anti-colonial approach to human responsibilities to ozone. The Planetary Boundaries describe a ‘safe operating space for humanity’. I will trouble this notion by focusing on the relational entanglements of the planetary system – human, animal, vegetable, mineral, and elemental. Secondly, the description camouflages ongoing colonial practices of privatizing the commons: it assumes a right to pollute (up to some predetermined limit), a right to ‘colonize’ the stratosphere. The underlying assumption is that some degree of environmental harm is tolerable, even when it involves appropriation of a global commons. My argument is that an anticolonial planetary boundary for ozone requires a relational ethic in which duties and responsibilities are to the relationships that inhere to ozone.

This chapter critically examines the concept of moral responsibility at the heart of everyday interpersonal and legal practices. While we routinely hold people morally responsible – praising and blaming them as if they genuinely deserve it – the chapter argues that such desert-based judgments are philosophically unjustified. Drawing on a range of philosophical literature, it distinguishes between several types of responsibility, including causal, role, and liability responsibility, and focuses on the central question of basic desert moral responsibility. The chapter defends the view that this kind of responsibility requires a form of free will we do not possess. Building on Derk Pereboom’s work, the chapter proposes a forward-looking, non-desert-based alternative grounded in protection, moral formation, reconciliation, and restoration. It also challenges the widespread assumption that moral responsibility practices are psychologically fixed or evolutionarily hardwired, citing crosscultural and empirical research to support their malleability. By replacing retributive attitudes with constructive, future-oriented responses, the chapter shows how free will skepticism can preserve what matters most in our moral lives – without relying on morally problematic notions of blame, indignation, or deserved suffering.

Chapter 5 focuses on responsibility as an ethical category in a newly articulated political community. Drawing from the intellectual and political work of Bengali writer Syed Waliullah, this chapter offers an analysis of his existential call to freedom in the service of a new postcolonial subjectivity. Canonized on both sides of post-partitioned Bengal, Waliullah’s oeuvre – fiction, drama, short stories, essays and paintings – though composed almost entirely abroad, draws on the land and landscapes of rural Bengal, as it does on certain paradigms of existential philosophy; his protagonists, for example, are wracked by a singular and terrible sense of responsibility. How might we understand this complex negotiation beyond the most basic ascriptions of belatedness and mimicry? Because he was based in Paris for most of his life after government posts in England, Germany, Indonesia, and Australia, I suggest self-translation, as a larger philosophical venture and as a way to understand a metaphysical or existential line of questioning in this work. In the process, we see that both “situation” and “responsibility” become newly imbued with meaning in the context of a rural, postcolonial Bengal.

Justice is central to Islamic ideology, rooted in divine principles and reflected in the structure of the universe. Economic and social justice, according to Islam, are inseparable from faith and must permeate every aspect of life – not just worship. The Qur’an and hadith stress individual and communal responsibility, condemning inequality, exploitation and negligence toward the disadvantaged. Justice is not only a moral value but a spiritual obligation, tied to one’s belief in God and accountability on the Day of Judgment.

Islam assigns collective responsibility to ensure that no one suffers from poverty or injustice. Wealth is viewed as a trust, not private property to be hoarded. Tools like charity (zakat), the prohibition of interest (riba) and profit-sharing (mudaraba) aim to prevent economic exploitation and promote fairness. Contemporary Muslim societies often fail to apply these principles, leading to increasing inequality, alienation and disconnection from faith-based justice.

Musa Sadr calls for scholars and governments to prioritize justice, support the oppressed, reform economic laws and reintegrate justice into educational and legal systems. True Islamic justice demands not charity, but systemic support – interest-free loans, rights for workers and equitable development. Without this, the community is at risk of moral and social disintegration.

Starting from the murmuring stories of Numbers (and Exodus), this chapter shows how questions of punishment, responsibility, and intention plays into the book’s treatment of the motif of murmuring.

Do other people limit or even threaten our freedom and our projects, or are they necessary to their realisation? Do we only answer to ourselves for our actions, or are we accountable to other people as well, and if so, to whom? Do we have a responsibility for the welfare of other people? These questions, which Beauvoir addressed in the works she wrote from the Second World War onwards, have lost none of their relevance. Chapter 3 explores them by analysing many of her works, including The Ethics of Ambiguity, Pyrrhus and Cineas, America Day by Day, and her novels The Blood of Others and The Mandarins, which focus on social responsibility, communal action, and groups. Her anti-individualistic concept of freedom, focussed on projects and solidarity, is contrasted with the so-called negative concept of freedom and versions of the liberal concept of freedom. Beauvoir’s concepts of freedom, solidarity, and responsibility are proposed as tools to reflect on current issues, including some uses of social media, assisted suicide, the environment, and what should be done about historical wrongs such as slavery.

This chapter concerns international organisations, from their inception to their rise. Regional organisations are described in Europe, Central and South America, Arabia, Africa and South East Asia. This is followed by an examination of some legal aspects of international organisations, such as their definition, and the question of legal personality. A discussion of the constituent instruments of such organisations is noted before the question of their powers is examined. The applicable law of such organisations is described, followed by an analysis of the responsibility of international organisations. The liability of member states of international organisations is considered, as is the accountability of the organisations. This is followed by a consideration of the privileges and immunities of international organisations. The chapter concludes with a look at the questions of withdrawal from such organisations, the dissolution of international organisations and the succession of international organisations.

Completing the arc from the desire to assert membership and rights as an handicapé, the final chapter considers how disabled Kinois turned away from this identity to pursue one of becoming a responsable, someone ‘responsible [for others]’. While controversial, begging and brokering gave access to hard-won economic resources that made it possible to have and care for children. Aspiring to such responsibilities, disabled people showed that integrating economic and social values was both means and ends. By successfully fulfilling the responsibilities of parenthood – the comparatively stable, higher value of social respectability that was once considered impossible for disabled people to achieve – they sought to become ‘valuable people’ (batu ya valeur). Claiming full adult personhood, they both conformed to and transformed the measurement of this highest regime of personhood, enjoining a debate over whether it is good to have many or fewer, well-supported children. Between action and aspiration, a testing and critiquing disposition towards value demonstrates how the extraordinary livelihood strategies of disabled people in the margins of urban society may be a most productive stage from which to examine the emerging debates about what is, or should be, good in society.