Knowledge of the molecular and physiological mechanisms of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) is no longer confined to the lab. Rather, DOHaD is part of a scattered landscape of policy initiatives, including political discourses, programmatic statements, and public health measures. This chapter examines what could be called the ‘moral paradox’ of DOHaD in policymaking; that is, the idea that while the scope, foundations, and practical implications of DOHaD research call for structural interventions addressing social determinants of health over the lifecourse, messages can boil down to simplistic claims of individual responsibility addressed to parents and gestating bodies. The chapter draws from a systematic literature review to document claims towards individual responsibilities in DOHaD publications. It shows that scientists rarely make any straightforward argument in favour of individual responsibilities for health. The ‘moral paradox’ of DOHaD arises from an ambiguous stance on the pragmatic possibilities of health promotion strategies inspired by DOHaD knowledge, which mixes up the current practical possibilities of the field with its policy framing, opportunities, and political ambitions. The chapter concludes that a greater awareness of these moral idiosyncrasies in DOHaD research may help the field embrace a social justice framing.

Much of norm research that focuses on actors’ behaviour in relation to a norm refers either to behaviour in accordance with a norm (e.g., appropriateness or compliance) or to behaviour that constitutes critical engagement or even rejection with a norm (e.g., contestation or norm violation). What remains unchartered by these approaches is behaviour that not only is in accordance with a norm but also goes in some way beyond the expected behaviour. We suggest calling this ‘responsible behaviour’. Based on constructivist norms research and research on responsibility in world politics, we develop a conceptualisation that allows to better understand such behaviour. To substantiate our understanding of norm-related behaviour, we develop a typology of four ideal types: appropriate, responsible, inappropriate, and irresponsible behaviour. We then zoom into responsible behaviour and identify three configurations of responsible behaviour. First, over fulfilment of a norm by an actor; second, actors previously not addressed by the norm nevertheless decide to act accordingly to the norm; third, norm generative behaviour. Finally, we illustrate these three configurations with different examples from the realm of global politics, looking at diverse actors such as municipal governments and armed non-state actors, studying different norms and norm types in various situations.

Pursuing German and Japanese war criminals and gaining compensation for survivors were high on the agenda of the victorious Allies after 1945. Enthusiasm, however, waned considerably and unforgivably in the context of the Cold War and partial restoration of pre-war elite networks. Long-term continuities in business–government networks in the coordinated economies of Germany and Japan meant that some of those who had been charged with war crimes – and/or those whose wealth derived at least in part from activities associated with the war – figured prominently in major post-war scandals. Over time, however, those directly tainted with pre-1945 crimes and practices begin to retire and die off. Moreover, the export orientation of both countries, combined with other aspects of the globalisation of business, finance, and markets, also changed the composition and dynamics of elite networks. This happened more rapidly and thoroughly in Germany than in Japan, owing to Germany’s greater dependence on exports; its central role in the European Union; and its greater openness to foreign imports and investment. German corporate governance therefore experienced more far-reaching reform than its Japanese counterpart. For many of the same reasons, Germany has made greater strides towards coming to terms with its pre-1945 past than Japan.

150 words: The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah contain oracles that address problems in and around ancient Judah in ways that are as incisive and critical as they are optimistic and constructive. Daniel C. Timmer’s The Theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah situates these books in their social and political contexts and examines the unique theology of each as it engages with imposing problems in Judah and beyond. In dialogue with recent scholarship, this study focuses on these books’ analysis and evaluation of the world as it is, focusing on both human beings and their actions and God’s commitment to purify, restore, and perfect the world. Timmer also surveys these books’ later theological use and cultural reception. Timmer also brings their theology into dialogue with concerns as varied as ecology, nationalism, and widespread injustice, highlighting the enduring significance of divine justice and grace for solid hope and effective service in our world.

50 words: This volume examines the powerful and poignant theology of the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Daniel C. Timmer situates these books’ theology in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and traces its multifaceted contribution to Jewish and Christian theology and to broader cultural spheres, without neglecting its contemporary significance.

20 words: This volume draws out the theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, attending to their ancient contexts, past use and reception, and contemporary significance.

The chapter views automatism in the light of the Victorian emphasis on the value of free will and individual responsibility. Daily life involved repeated practical synthesis of contradictory judgments about the determined, or automatic, and moral sources of action. Criminal court cases in which there was a defense of insanity exemplified the issues at stake in relating the disordered brain and the moral will. In the Victorian period, medical experts began to play a large part in legal judgments about insanity and criminal responsibility, and they articulated evidence for the involuntary, or automatic, form of insane actions. Public interest in these issues preceded and informed debate about automatism in philosophy and science. The chapter uses a spectacular 1854 case of multiple child murder by the children’s mother to shape discussion of the wider issues. The case both shows the complexity of social issues touching on automatism and offers insight into the imagination that accompanied Victorian fears about automatism replacing free will.

Daoist philosophy takes as axiomatic that the constant transformation of things in the world is not to be deprecated, but rather celebrated as the basis for the mutual flourishing of the myriad things. This view contains both cyclical and linear conceptions of time and is predicated on a view of a porous body that does not simply occupy blank space or time, but rather is transformed by and also transforms space and time. The porosity and pliability of our cosmos suggests that we should value what is soft and weak rather than what is conventionally hard and strong. This leads to the formulation of an ethic of “plasticity” that governs our responsible engagement with our planetary context.

This chapter explores the connections between ethics, the phenomenological (and hermeneutical) traditions, and education. It focuses on the idea of the subject, showing phenomenology’s contrast with the modernist picture of the autonomous subject. The chapter first briefly traces the idea of the subject in phenomenology through four representative figures – Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Levinas – and then sketches their approaches to ethics. Then it pivots to four ethical concepts in philosophy of education in this tradition – understanding, risk, subjectification, and responsibility – by connecting them to phenomenological tradition’s broad conception of the subject. The chapter brings into relief the contribution phenomenology makes to envisioning living well together and human flourishing, and education’s role in fostering ethical subjects that would enact such societies.

We have seen that available accounts of possessed evidence, evidence one should have possessed, and permissible suspension of judgement struggle to accommodate the phenomenon of evidence resistance. Along the way, we have, in particular, seen that virtue reliabilist accounts of reasons to believe, permissible suspension, and propositional warrant don’t do the needed work. At that point, some readers would have already thought that one straightforward explanation of the resistance data is afforded by the competing, virtue responsibilist camp: roughly, on this view, evidence resistance could be conceptualised as a failure to manifest epistemic responsibility in inquiry and/or as a manifestation/indication of epistemic vice. This chapter looks into the credentials of this move. I argue that once we distinguish epistemic virtues and vices proper from mere moral virtues and vices with epistemic content, it transpires that accounting for resistance cases, as well as accounting for epistemic virtue and vice, requires epistemic value-first unpacking.

This chapter addresses a fundamental debate in the field – the presumed irreconcilability of the principles of academic freedom on the one hand and diversity and inclusion on the other. It examines contested conceptions of academic freedom through academics’ experiences in Lebanon, the UAE, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In response to polemical and polarised debates, it has been theorised that the principles of justice and inclusion and the principles of academic freedom are complementary rather than contradictory. However, this potential complementarity has not been examined to date in relation to the production of knowledge. This chapter makes the original proposition that this complementarity between inclusion and academic freedom is also a requisite in the production of ‘inclusive knowledge’.

This chapter places the scholar and their scholarship in time, exploring their temporal positionality, responsibilities, and political relevance. If the past is a construct of the present, the position of the scholar shifts from that of an actor engaged in a value-neutral, transhistorical process of knowledge accumulation to that of an actor intervening in a particular present. Thinking about this positionality from a temporal perspective centers scholarly reflexivity, elevating questions of intellectual responsibility alongside analytical concerns.

Studies of agency are crucial if we are to grapple with pressing societal and environmental problems. Relevant conceptual and methodological solutions are needed to make alternative futures possible. This chapter outlines a broad position from which the subsequent contributions to this edited volume depart: one that recognises the urgency of agency and the value of cultural-historical perspectives in breaking away from problematic notions that frame agency as a matter of individuals pitted against the social, or in which individual actions lose their social contingency. Elaborating agency as a matter of struggle where individual and social are in dialectic relations, the chapter focusses on motives, mediation and motion. Within a broader and still-evolving cultural-historical framework, these motifs offer a distinctive way to deal with the challenges of conceptualising and facilitating agency, one which brings alternative futures into the realm of the possible by linking agency with learning and development.

This chapter continues the defense of ethical environmentalism by introducing the integration thesis. This thesis holds that the ethical, interpersonal and impersonally valuable dimensions of morality interlock in ways that frustrate efforts to focus exclusively on one without attending to the others. The case for ethical environmentalism would be considerably strengthened by the truth of the integration thesis. This chapter presents a series of arguments in support of the integration thesis, each of which builds on the integral connection between distributive fairness and the common good of a society. Policies and laws that at first pass do not appear to be distributive are shown to have distributive effects on the lives of those who are subject to them that merit consideration at the bar of fairness. Given the truth of the integration thesis, the chapter next argues that the project of ethical environmentalism lends substantial support to certain forms of legal paternalism, state support for impersonal goods, such as natural beauty and human excellence, and state support for the goods of tradition. The chapter concludes by relating the project of ethical environmentalism to Devlin’s thesis that a society may use the law to preserve itself.