A well-functioned society depends on its ability to nurture, attract, and deploy talents in critical sectors. However, the implementation of some meritocratic principles to allocate positions often leads to unjust social hierarchies. Is there, then, a solution to meritocracy’s dysfunctional hierarchical effects? This paper attempts to answer this by drawing on the real-world cases of Singapore and the USA to investigate the relationship of toxic social hierarchies with meritocracy. It proposes three solutions to curb the unjustifiable social stratifications and the erosion of social cooperation often associated with social meritocracy. These reflections could help to shed light on the grounds for the ongoing debates on social hierarchies and provide valuable insights into how to weigh up existing socio-political structures.

This book offers a new theory of democracy that advances debates on democracy and political meritocracy by synthesizing the best of contemporary Western democratic theory and Confucian political theory. The general questions that this book poses, and attempts to answer, are: can findings in Western democratic theories be used to address the Confucian meritocrats' concern for the ability of democracy to produce desirable outcomes? What is the relationship of political leaders with democracy? Can insights from Confucian political theory be used to reconceptualize how political parties in democratic societies ensure that their leaders use their power for common political goals? The answer to these questions is the theory of democracy defended in this book: meritocratic democracy. Meritocratic democracy comprises three main propositions: (a) Democratic rule is epistemically superior to meritocratic forms of government; (b) Contemporary democracies need public-spirited political leaders; (c) A system of partisan juries that preselect the candidates running for the party leadership can bring about public-spirited leadership. Meritocratic democracy opens a path for a global debate on democratic theory by exemplifying the inherent capacity of political theorization to transcend boundaries between various philosophical standpoints, and highlighting its potential for constructive reciprocal contestation.

Technologies have all kinds of impacts on the environment, on human behavior, on our society and on what we believe and value. But some technologies are not just impactful, they are also socially disruptive: they challenge existing institutions, social practices, beliefs and conceptual categories. Here we are particularly interested in technologies that disrupt existing concepts, for example because they lead to profound uncertainty about how to classify matters. Is a humanoid robot - which looks and even acts like a human - to be classified as a person or is it just an inert machine? Conceptual disruption occurs when the meaning of concepts is challenged, and such challenges may potentially lead to a revision of concepts. We illustrate how technologies can be conceptually disruptive through a range of examples, and we argue for an intercultural outlook in studying these socially disruptive technologies and conceptual disruption. Such an outlook is needed to avoid a Western bias in labeling technologies socially or conceptually disruptive, as this outlook takes inspiration from a broad range of philosophical traditions.

Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of motherhood and birth. Some have suggested that we address global warming by engineering the climate, but how does this impact our responsibility to future generations and our relation to nature? This book shows how technologies can be socially and conceptually disruptive and investigates how to come to terms with this disruptive potential. Four technologies are studied: social media, social robots, climate engineering and artificial wombs. The authors highlight the disruptive potential of these technologies, and the new questions this raises. The book also discusses responses to conceptual disruption, like conceptual engineering, the deliberate revision of concepts.

Can Confucian ethics contribute to diagnosing the root causes of video games' toxicity and formulating design requirements for redressing it? Contemporary Confucian studies on technology have not addressed these questions, although video games have become an important part of contemporary human life. This paper advances Confucian-inspired ethical studies on technologies by bringing attention to the moral dimension of this underexamined aspect of contemporary life. By focusing on League of Legends (one of the most popular toxic online multiplayer games), we argue that League's toxic environment hinders the cultivation of ren, shu, and he, but Confucian conceptual resources can inspire the formulation of at least three design recommendations against League's toxicity. The first is to eliminate killing in the game by banking on players' desire to express their skillfulness. The second is to include a rewatching feature to sanction toxic players with the aim of inculcating sympathy in them. The last is to add a procedure before and after each match, where players can cordially interact with each other and develop mutual respect.

This paper examines the relationship between democratic participation and the well-being of the people–a fundamental aim of Confucian government. It argues that although the value of democratic participation for people’s moral cultivation may be dubious (as suggested recently by Sungmoon Kim), democratic participation is key to meeting other salient aspects of people’s well-being. Drawing on developments in Western epistemic analyses of democracy, this paper shows that the complexity of political issues in developed countries makes democracy an important decision-making process to enhance the well-being of most of the members of society.