1. Introduction to Innovation and Ethics: a Collaborative Philosophy

1. Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy

Apollo gave Hermes a herald’s staff in recognition of his role as messenger of the gods.1 Hermes wore winged shoes to travel fast and invented a musical instrument, the lyre. Transferring divine ideas, travel, speed, invention – does Greek mythology not offer the perfect patron of innovators? In the Roman Empire, Hermes, now known as Mercury, was a popular god. He was the patron of merchants. He not only carried the herald’s staff but also a wallet. Mercury was also the god of thieves. He had to give the lyre to Apollo in exchange for the cattle he stole from him. Divine ideas, invention, travel, speed, theft and wealth? The god also illustrates the mercurial, slippery quality of innovation – an important yet elusive concept. Throughout much of the twentieth century innovation played a central and often unquestioned role in economic development and raising the standard of living. However, there is now a growing dissatisfaction with innovation. It no longer seems good enough to simply speak about innovation. There is a rise of adjectives, qualifying innovation in evaluative2 terms: free innovation, frugal innovation, responsible innovation, social innovation, sustainable innovation to name a few. Does innovation have to be qualified so as to be rescued? Is more radical thinking required: less innovation, exnovation, no innovation? What about the concept of the economy presupposed in most discussions of innovation? Section 1.1 begins with some preliminary remarks on the relation between philosophy and innovation. Section 1.2 turns to the conceptual framework. It proposes a collaborative concept framework in recognition of the large number of disciplines and specialities, as well as actors from government, civil society and business that the concept brings together in theory and practice. Critically drawing from a conceptual proposal used in innovation research, essentially contested concepts, Section 2 identifies the main features of a collaborative concept framework. Section 1.3 returns to the evaluative aspect and provides a first outline of the normative starting point taken in this book, nature-respecting sufficiency: of a life in dignity for all, of enough for all and with respect for all.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 2 Innovation, ethics and our common futures

1.1 INNOVATION AND PHILOSOPHY

The Circumstances of Innovation

The verb ‘to innovate’ originates from mid-sixteenth-century Latin use: from in- ‘into’ + novare ‘make new’ (from novus ‘new’).3 Somebody invents the lyre and brings it into her world, somebody else invents the wheel; and to be sure this somebody could be a group, and various groups could independently have the same/similar innovations. Be it from necessity and pressing problems, be it from curiosity and playfulness, innovation in this sense is a feature of all societies. Innovation society in a weak sense refers to the actors, institutions and ways of thinking promoting/hindering innovation in any society. This weak sense misses out on the more specific and stronger sense, in which this expression is used in contemporary nation states. It refers to societies that aim at promoting innovation and therefore have innovation policies. This development significantly affects the circumstances of innovation as citizens in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century nation states have come to know them. From the side of production and supply, innovation society in the strong sense is one with products and services that keep on changing, with entire industries coming and going, with institutionalized uncertainty. As a result, skills, habits and relations are in principle in question: tomorrow they might be obsolete. Everyone is encouraged to be a lifelong learner. This affects workers and employees, entrepreneurs and managers. Competition and innovation from others means that one’s business model could become obsolete at any time. This pushes companies to propose ever-new ideas with the hope of attracting resources and, most importantly, believers (Beckert 2016, 13ff.). From the side of consumption and demand, uncertainty and restlessness can also be observed. On the one hand, consumption promises and often delivers convenience and satisfaction, status and even immortality (Jackson 2016, 189) – all via the purchase of goods. On the other hand, goods and services continuously change. A childhood in the 1980s was typically accompanied by tapes and records; in the 1990s, by CDs and later on MP3 players; now, music can be conveniently streamed. The material memory of tapes and CDs becomes obsolete. Moreover, the stream of new products and services requires time and attention to be dedicated to choosing and enjoying them. Lifestyle management in consumer society is a full-time job. It makes civic participation difficult as its consumer-citizens just do not seem to have the time (Blühdorn 2013). Innovation society is not confined to things bought in the market; it includes just as much the associated meanings and practices. Nevertheless, because

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 3 the prevailing use of innovation is focused on technological novelty for commercial use (Godin and Vinck 2017), there is a tendency to reify: innovation as a matter of commodities with an (expected) exchange value and associated market instruments. The innovation society is seen as an innovation system that can be externally observed with quantitative performance indicators for patents and growth.4 The quality of things, relations and their change is seemingly replaced by the quantity of innovation for development as an abstract category. ‘Seemingly’, as the members of innovation society in a strong sense are also, at least in part, aware of this tendency; they reflect on it, endorse it, resist it, etc. This reflection and discussion is crucial for philosophy and ethics. A heuristic approach is hence useful to bring innovation into focus. I will use a ‘three orders of innovation society’ heuristic. Granted the central importance of innovation for the economy and the production of goods and services, we can start with the observation of our condition as beings with an economic need, that is the human need to ‘extract, transform, distribute, and consume the produce of nature’ (Mann 2013, 1–2).5 In a first-order system of reproduction,6 corresponding to the weak sense of innovation society introduced above, the goods are produced within a society that perceives its economy within a stationary state. Goods help reproduce the society – say the food produced in agrarian society – but all this happens in the endless return of the cycle of the seasons. To be sure, there is invention and innovation from time to time, but this is accidental or problem-driven; the prevailing mode is stationary (and above it all, the immortal gods entertain with their adventures). By contrast, in an innovation society in the strong sense, innovation is a societal strategy and there is a second-order system of reproduction. The goal is an ‘innovation-friendly environment that makes it easier for great ideas to be turned into products and services’ (to quote from the definition of the EU ‘innovation union’).7 The gale of creative destruction, unlike the wind that brings the rain, is intentionally called forth by investors, and it blows relent- lessly from the future. There are expectations and rules that reinforce the cycle of creative destruction and thereby seek to create a second-order stability, that is, one that ensures the endless further cycling of creative destruction (see Chapter 2). Capitalism is the most well-known and economically dynamic expression of such a society, and is associated with experiences that this section started off with: the institutionalized uncertainty of producers and consumers; the legitimacy of identifying innovation with monetary numbers or patent indicators; the tendency to associate the new with the good and the old with the traditional (in a pejorative way) and so on. It is in the search of the novel that ‘innovation citizens’ seek to become immortal like the gods – and

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 4 Innovation, ethics and our common futures that they become mortally scared if the spiral of progress does not deliver the goods. If these rules of second-order reproduction in innovation societies become problematic, a third-order innovation society emerges. The second-order rules of the innovation game become the subject of reflection. Innovation has lost its certainty, with it the future its progress. No longer is it just a matter of more innovation: this third-order society also asks if innovation is needed and if so, what kind; if it should be resisted and discontinued; how (not) to measure it; if and where it needs to be accelerated or slowed down; and above all, why it is relevant – for what ends and for what goods? The direction of innovation society becomes an issue, not least because the expansion and deepening of markets undermines its own social and ecological preconditions. The unintended consequences of innovations no longer fit together into a narrative of an invisible hand creating overall benefits and raising the standard of living. It is put into doubt by climate emergency and persistent unsustainability. As second-order innovation society seems difficult to stop, catastrophe looms as the unintended, inevitable result of the invisible hand of progress. Innovation in the second-order system has a strong libertarian-individualist aspect – a re-occurring celebration of the innovator putting inventions into practice, privately (Godin 2014, 22), in his garage (he is a man). Innovation in the third order, by contrast, moves towards the social and the collective. Rather than the gale of creative destruction, it is the hurricane of climate emergency calling for a deliberate, more political search for a change in direction. Many nation states of the early twenty-first century seem to be somewhere between these second- and third-order societies. A direction of innovation by considerations of justice and sustainability is widely recognized as important. But what this means exactly and if such change in direction will happen is far from clear (also because citizens and companies struggle to find the time for such third-order questions). There is the rise of the qualifiers. Responsible innovation focuses on knowledge and technology (Owen et al. 2013a; 2013b), free innovation on the household (von Hippel 2016), sustainable innovation on a long-term socio-ecological perspective (Fichter 2010). Social innovation is the most generic of these qualifiers, sometimes used to refer to innovation from civil society as a contrast to business and markets, but often also to qualify innovation within markets or at the intersection of markets, civil society and politics as aiming beyond only self-interest towards the common good. I will use the qualifier ‘social’ as a short term for a dissatisfaction with post-Second World War second-order innovation discourse. The qualifier points to a call for rethinking innovation and social change beyond business, markets and technology development for commercial use (but crucially including the latter in the search for a change of direction).

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 5

This book belongs to the contributions seeking to make a case for such a change – whether it will happen, and in time, is an entirely different question. Rather, innovation is one basic freedom opportunity, enforced, deepened and accelerated in second-order innovation society, with countless gains but also a paradoxical reification of the consumer self in a seemingly unstoppable, ‘natural’ process. Social innovation is an invitation and message to bring this process to the public, to reflect on it and consider options. Indeed, viewed together, the innovation qualifiers seem to point to the need for a deep, struc- tural and integrated change (Schot and Kanger 2018). Innovation society in the strong sense is inspired by the Renaissance, not least by its art that greatly impressed Schumpeter (1932), the prophet of creative destruction (McCraw 2007). It took off with the rise of science, industriali- zation and the nation state, and reached operating altitude with the post-Second World War innovation policies. This epochal sense of the novel in innovation is associated with the promise of progress and development (Ziegler 2017a, 329), and thus concepts that are still defended as modernity and enlightenment (Pinker 2018). However, due to the deep crisis of this epoch – as dramatically shown by the sixth mass extinction, climate emergency, and the world wars and genocides of the twentieth century – there is an open question. Are these qualifications of the modern project, or do they point to a more fundamental, deeper change? Asking these questions is important as what is marketed as innovative need not be very innovative with a view to societal goals (or even be innovative at all). It is destructive creation rather than creative destruction (Soete 2013). For example, the planned obsolescence of clothing or software, designed to force consumers to repeatedly buy new products even in the absence of any significant, qualitative change. The language of innovation and disruptive change can disguise the absence of change, not least with respect to where change matters most. The prevailing focus on a specific capitalist version of second-order innovation societies can also distort the very understanding of change, for example via the hero entrepreneur narrative that, unchecked, tells history in a misleading way. For instance, James B. Duke has been presented as a nineteenth-century Schumpeterian entrepreneur who risked investing in machine-made cigarettes, destroying competitors with their hand-rolled cigarettes and creating control over the national market (Enstad 2019). However, as Enstad points out, Duke’s investment in the new technology was not particularly novel in the context of his competitors. The rise of the legal construct of ‘corporate personhood’ explains the market power he acquired much better.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 6 Innovation, ethics and our common futures

Innovation and Ethics: Individual Expression, Social Relation, Improved Outcomes

In retrospect, it took a surprisingly long time for innovation to become recognized as a central concept in economics. A locus classicus is the work of Joseph Schumpeter in the early twentieth century (Schumpeter 1911).8 It identifies the carrying out of new combinations as a central concept for the explanation of economic development, and argues that such development is particularly dynamic in capitalist economies. In this way, innovation becomes the concept underwriting a general, promissory note: unlimited economic development and an ever-increasing ‘standard of living’ (Schumpeter 1942). Adapting my initial vignette: discovering, carrying out and diffusing divine ideas, humans aspire to live like the gods. Interestingly though, material progress in products is not enough. Immortality is an innovation frontier, with a Silicon Valley tech giant investing millions in ‘solving death’ (Harari 2016, 28).9 Leaving aside for now this mortal question, and turning to the sober perspective of the economists, it is important to take note that Schumpeter and other economists are responsible for a macro-economic perspective on innovation and with it the idea of gale of creative destruction (Schumpeter 1942), associated today with a monetary focus on GDP growth as the measure of wealth and a rising standard of living. It is a perspective on the outcome of innovation, and it is supported by a staggering improvement in the material conditions of living. Still, this powerful macro perspective must not overshadow the micro and meso perspective. At the individual and group levels, innovation can be an expression of human freedom. It allows people to express themselves and their distinct abilities, to create and adopt new ways of doing and being, and to respond to problems. Responding to the loss of his eyesight during childhood, Louis Braille invented a system for reading and writing, known today as Braille. Innovation is not simply having a new idea (an invention), but carrying it out in practice. This includes imitating others, getting inspired by them or creatively responding to an established practice. These are inherently social processes, requiring interaction with others, such as imitation, inspiration and resistance, group formation and networking, and sometimes even institution building. For example, the cooperative movement of the nineteenth century established the cooperative as a distinct organizational form based on democratic ownership with equal voting rights (Rochdale Principles) that has since become widely accepted and found recognition in national legislations. Thus, innovation is not only important for its outputs and outcomes, but also as a social process. How such processes are organized, and the voice and power participants have in them, is of central importance for the ethical aspect of innovation.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 7

These various benefits of innovation acknowledged, it is equally important to note that the ‘improvement’ innovation brings has deeply ambivalent results. Progress as economic development, and with it the continuous improvement in material standards of living, is a major driver of an unsustainable ecological footprint. There is a need for less material-intensive innovation and for the exnovation of unsustainable practices and products (Jackson 2016). Moreover, the continuous increase of the material standard of living has not abolished wealth and income inequalities (Piketty and Saez 2014). To the contrary, innovation often provides and legitimates gains and recognition for the few. Many people will have heard of Braille; fewer people will know that Louis Braille drew inspiration from already existing practices, such as the system used by blind composer Maria Theresia von Paradis. While the reduction of the innovation to Braille might seem innocent, the way in which today’s tech entrepreneurs rely on much prior research and accumulated knowledge for their new products and services is not. There is a lively debate as to whether the shared grounds and prior knowledge contributions they rely on are fairly reflected in the distribution of gains from such innovations (Mazzucato 2013a). Innovation as we know it neither contributes optimally to the economic well-being of those at the bottom of the income distribution nor is innovative capacity optimally used to meet the most pressing needs worldwide. ‘The world’s combined innovative capacity has spewed forth iPhones and space shuttles but not yet managed to produce clean energy or universal access to water’ (Stilgoe 2013, xii). Even worse, knowledge-driven market-innovation processes in contemporary, unequal societies tend to reinforce inegalitarian tendencies (Woodhouse and Sarewitz 2007, 142). Thus, there is much to be discussed in the following chapters.

Pro-Innovation Bias

One lesson from these ethical points is to take the pro-innovation bias seri- ously. In his classic work on the diffusion of innovation, Rogers (1983, 92) defines it as follows: ‘An innovation should be diffused and adopted by all members of a social system, it should be diffused more rapidly, and the innovation should neither be re-invented nor rejected.’10 The implication of this perceived ‘permanent goodness’ of innovation is a failure to think seri- ously about the rejection of innovation, its discontinuation or modification as rational and reasonable responses in the societal change repertoire. Godin and Vinck (2017, 5) note that the contours of the pro-innovation bias in the twentieth century can be further spelled out. It is a focus on technological innovation, meaning the ‘commercialization of new goods, from invention to diffusion’. The mainstream conception of innovation, they argue, is focused on the inherent goodness of technology, understood as a planned and rational

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 8 Innovation, ethics and our common futures process, powered by research and development (Godin and Vinck 2017, 2). This conception emerged after the Second World War and has implications for history – as in the example of the focus on a mass-production machine in the tobacco entrepreneur story above. More recent examples include the push for ICT (internet and communication technologies) for development or the enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. Philosophically, the problems of the pro-innovation bias seem all too obvious. Paraphrasing Rogers’ definition, it seems to suggest: mobile phones for all (including the deaf, those with attention deficits as well as hermits), as quickly as possible (if your phone is a year old, you need a new one), and with an installed daily message that repair or non-use of the phone is bad for you and for society. But even if it is easy to detect problems resulting from this bias, it remains a persistent one. A review from 2009 notes that ‘the pro-innovation bias still characterizes most diffusion studies today’ (Rogers et al. 2009, 422). One implication of the pro-innovation bias is deep innovation imperialism: the extension of innovation to all change processes, and specifically, an image of these change processes based on technological innovation for commercial use. Put this way, however, the remedy suggests itself: a vocabulary of social change beyond innovation only, not least to better establish the boundaries of the concept; and a conception of innovation that is internally rich enough to account for a diversity of innovations beyond the hegemonic use. Based on a survey of the literature, these tasks will be dealt with in Chapter 2.

Benign-Neglect Innovation Bias

Political philosophy and philosophy of economics are flourishing fields of philosophy. However, there is no philosophy of innovation: there is no received classic of the field, nor is there any sustained discussion. Standard introduc- tions to the philosophy of economics have no special entries on innovation (Hausman 2008; Hausman et al. 2016), widely used philosophical encyclopae- dias no dedicated entries.11 ‘There is a clear lack of philosophical reflection on the conception of innovation’ (Blok 2018, 2). In philosophical texts, innovation tends to be used with its twentieth-century positive connotation: philosopher X has a new and important idea or argument that contributes to the discussion of Y. In short, philosophers are innovative but there is no philosophy of innovation. If a problematic term is used positively but not further analysed, we can speak of a benign-neglect bias. It is a neglect as there is no systematic treatment; it is benign as the term is used in a favourable, positive way. It is a benign-neglect as this use tends to ignore its undesirable consequences, along with co-responsibility for dealing with them. Unlike the pro-innovation bias,

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 9 this bias is not an established term in the literature. I introduce it here to better explore the distinct role of philosophy. One reason for the benign-neglect innovation bias is the following thought: when somebody speaks of an innovation, the real issue concerns a specific material or conceptual context. The steam engine was an important technical innovation, just as Kant’s critiques were conceptual ones. Adding ‘innovation’ in both examples only signals an approval or indication of interest/relevance. Beyond this indication, the real issues are questions of engineering and industrial organization, or of a non-metaphysical conception of the a priori. This thought expresses an important scepticism. Rather than thinking about innovation, we ought to think about the respective issues. However, at the very least we also ought to be sceptical regarding the insinu- ation that nothing of importance is added if ‘innovation’ is added. Who are the experts who benefit from relabelling something as an innovation? Who gets to talk about an innovation once this labelling move has been made, and for what end? To what extent does this possibly obscure or defer from the real issues? The observation of a narrowing down of innovation as technical innovation for markets and economic growth above already hints at a first answer. A specific reason for the neglect of innovation as regards justice is the prevailing focus in the discussion of (distributive) justice on ‘currencies’ of distribution (such as money, resources, utility and capabilities). It is a discussion of established units and their order. Innovations by definition are new and conceptually unruly, are difficult to ‘compare’ and therefore also to ‘evaluate’ according to yardsticks that require orderly units. This suggests a conceptual difficulty of relating innovation and justice, and a possible reason for a conceptual blind spot.12 Hermes delivers in the daytime, but the owl of Minerva only takes off at dusk. The next section proposes a collaborative approach that offers one way of examining this gap. In this way, the book will propose via the subsequent chapters that philosophy has much to contribute to a critical discussion of innovation. Unlike the social sciences, which are under pressure to produce empirical research on specific innovations and innovation discourses, philosophy has the privilege to study such research itself – to study (paraphrasing Ernst Cassirer) the diversity of the forms of innovations, with a view to inte- grating themes of a time, as well as to reflect on the specificity and limitations of various (including hegemonic) perspectives.

1.2 CONTESTATION AND COLLABORATION

An influential framework for the analysis of concepts that are widely used yet seemingly vague and ambivalent is the essentially contested concept framework (Gallie 1956).13 It has been used for the discussion of major societal

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 10 Innovation, ethics and our common futures ideas such as sustainable development (Jacobs 1999), of actor concepts such as social entrepreneurship (Ziegler 2009; Teasdale 2012; Gebauer and Ziegler 2013; Choi and Majumdar 2014), organizational concepts such as corporate social responsibility (Okoye 2009) and sectoral ideas such as the circular economy (Korhonen et al. 2018). It has also been applied to innovation discourse (Ayob et al. 2016). The framework has been so successful that criteria and the rationale for them are usually no longer reflected on but simply used in the application of the framework to a concept. This section will first spell out these criteria and their rationale, and then turn to the collaborative framework used throughout this book. In a seminal contribution, Walter Gallie observes that there are concepts such as art, democracy and freedom that are a source of frustration for all those who expect fixed definitions (Gallie 1956).14 These concepts, which he characterizes as essentially contested concepts, yield constant and controversial discussion about their proper use. What is art? What is democracy? What is freedom? Answers are wide-ranging, so wide-ranging that even the possibility of a real discussion is put into doubt. Perhaps discussants are just confused and talking past each other? However, due to the basic importance of these concepts for social life, simply abandoning them to a garbage dump of confused concepts is not a viable option. Like garbage that leaks into the groundwater, the concepts are likely to return. So how can we live with such concepts? How can we give them a place in our thinking? Gallie proposes a framework to foster discussion. ‘The proper use of [essentially contested concepts] inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users’ (Gallie 1956, 169). We can analyse such concepts according to shared criteria, and these criteria provide us with insights that promote a discussion in awareness of other ways of using the concept. Not all ways of using a concept are confused, and if we see that point and the reasons for it, this may foster progress and even improved concept use. Gallie’s criteria for essentially contested concepts are: 1. They are appreciative in the sense that they signify some ‘kind of valued achievement’ (Gallie 1956, 171). It follows that in the analysis of these concepts, we need to carefully study what evaluations or norms are invoked when the terms are used. As Michael Freeden notes (Freeden 1996, 56), appraised and valued achievement can erroneously suggest positively valued concepts only. Democracy in this sense might be positively valued because of the high value accorded to the self-determination of citizens. However, we can also observe (to paraphrase Gallie) that during the last 150 years, totalitarianism has steadily established itself as a negatively evaluated concept par excellence, or that over the last few decades neolib- eral has become widely used to articulate a negative appraisal of policies.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 11

The valued achievement can also be ambiguous. Power is an example of a concept that does not fall neatly into categories of good or bad.15 2. They are ‘internally complex’ (Gallie 1956, 171). The use of the concept draws on different elements or parts that are central to its use; these elements cannot be substituted or derived in terms of one part only. For example, the concept of democracy includes the idea of power exercised for the people and of power exercised by the people. 3. They are ‘variously describable’ (Gallie 1956, 172), depending on how the parts and their relation to the whole are interpreted. For example, the two aspects of democracy just mentioned are sometimes discussed, respectively, as the output dimension of democracy and what it achieves for the people, and the input dimension and how people are involved in the preparation and making of decisions. 4. They are ‘“open” in character in light of changing circumstances’ (Gallie 1956, 172). For example, the input/output discussion of the legitimacy of decision-making in Europe is a response to the emergence of the European Union as a supra-national entity and decisions made for the people beyond the democratic nation state. Some scholars argue for the importance of throughput as a further element, in terms of the accountability and trans- parency of the process of democratic governance (Schmidt 2013). 5. Gallie proposes a reciprocity criterion: ‘Each party must have at least some appreciation of the different criteria in the light of which the other parties claim to be applying the concept in question’ (Gallie 1956, 172). As it is unclear why the users of a concept such as democracy or art must have some appreciation of the conception of other parties – they could just use it in their own way and ignore the view of others – this criterion is frequently de-emphasized in the subsequent debate (Collier et al. 2006, 219). At least in the sciences, however, concept users are confronted via the discussion within a discipline with different uses of a concept, the reasons for them, etc. For example, democratic theorists vigorously debate various conceptions of deliberative, participatory and representative democracy. 6. They have exemplars in the sense of a prototype or model, which serve as a continuous inspiration for the parties and as a source of authority (Gallie 1956, 180). Thus, in the discussion of democracy, Athenian democracy and the French Revolution are frequently invoked. This criterion can be used in a narrow way to refer to the original exemplar. Yet, as the history of democracy shows, different instances are invoked as exemplars. According to a wider understanding, we can think of exemplars in the plural as instances that anchor a discussion (Collier et al. 2006, 220). 7. Gallie also proposes a criterion of progressive competition. The continuous competition as to the proper use of the concept between various users and their conceptions enables the concept to be ‘sustained and/or developed in

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 12 Innovation, ethics and our common futures

optimum fashion’ (Gallie 1956, 180). Yet, it is easy to think of discussions that are simply of poor quality, move in repetitive circles or even deterio- rate. Therefore, it has been proposed to think of this point as a possibility that is realized for some contested concepts but not necessarily for all (Collier et al. 2006, 221). This proposal is supported by the observation that progressive competition (unlike the other criteria) draws on an external goal (progress in discussion) rather than on an observation of how these concepts are used.16 With Gallie’s criteria the potential for controversy becomes clear, especially with the first four criteria, which he identifies as the most important of the set (Gallie 1956, 172). The criteria can explain differences in debates and provide reasons for sustained argumentation. This has hence been used to explain and expect a variety of conceptions,17 that is different ways in which the general ideas are specified and put together. Rather than being an indicator of confusion, a variety of conceptions facilitates understanding because the conceptions spell out possible combinations, thereby raising questions around the concept and deepening our understanding. Viewed this way, a variety of conceptions can be seen as prima facie healthy. They help us to better understand the various issues and stakes the concept brings to the fore.

A Collaborative Framework

Even though there is much to be learnt from Gallie’s contested concept proposal, we should critically draw from it and instead think of innovation as a collaborative concept, or so this section will argue. To contest is to make something the subject of an argument; it connotes struggle and fight, the winning or losing of arguments. Gallie reinforces these connotations when he speaks of progressive competition, of the optimum use of a concept, and when he draws on the champion team as an example to illustrate his point (Gallie 1956). Contestation is a familiar aspect of politics and of many other discussions. However, discussions of concepts are also cooperative in numerous ways. This point is clear if we pay attention to complementarity. In research, some scientists focus on measurement, other scientists focus on theory development. It is a commonplace of method that operational definitions for measurement need not be identical with declarative definitions for concept development (Sartori 1984, 31). For example, the difficult task of finding operationaliza- tions for measuring innovation is different from the task of theorizing the role of innovation for social change. There can be a place for both, and work based on either can mutually inform theoretical and empirical works.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 13

Moreover, different disciplines and specialities have different research foci. For example, political scientists often focus on questions of power, ethicists on questions of values and norms. If these different epistemic interests are framed as a contestation, the complementarity of the contributions is overshadowed and likely even missed. Furthermore, concepts are used in a variety of contexts; geographical, cultural, etc. To frame this as contestation again misses the point. In short, the focus on contestation for optimum use is problematic if it leads to a disregard of the learning possibilities from different contexts, disciplines and actors. As the discontent with innovation (and the call for social innovation) also articulates a criticism of a reductive, market-focused approach to innovation, such overshadowing by one perspective is particularly problematic: it may lead to missing the point altogether. In their synthesis of the social innovation literature, Robert van der Have and Luis Rubalcaba (2016) find research on social innovation to cluster around four intellectual communities: community psychology, creativity research, social and societal challenges around sustainability transitions, and local development. Robert Grimm et al. (2013) observe interest in social innovation from organization studies, territorial studies, environmental studies, entrepreneurship studies, and social policy research. These communities and specialities add to the depth and diversity in the study of social innovation: foci on places such as cities or workplaces, foci on actors and institutions, foci on societal challenges and ways of meeting them. It would be odd to frame such a diversity of disciplinary interests and pragmatic contexts as contestations; to the contrary, this variety enriches the discussion beyond a reductive focus on for-profit innovation in markets. Innovation discussions should not be reduced to contestation. Rather, the potential for complementary research should be actively sought out so as to contribute towards a more balanced account of innovation in all its variety of actors, places and contexts, especially given the current discontent with innovation tout court. The comparison with sustainable development is instructive. Without working together – the insights of ecologists on nature conservation alongside the insights of economists on development – there is a danger of reducing the concept to one part only, thereby facilitating only partial applications in policies and political projects. Adjectives such as social, green, sustainable etc., create space to bring issues and actors together, both in practice and theory. If the discussion moves from development to sustainable development, a space opens for actors from development cooperation to discuss with actors from nature conservation.18 Likewise, the move from innovation to social innovation creates space for disciplines and perspectives beyond economics and management studies. The qualifier ‘collaborative’ highlights a dynamic that is not captured very well by the term contestation. When people work or discuss with others,

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 14 Innovation, ethics and our common futures including opponents or in the extreme with the enemy (as the collaborateur does) we can speak of collaboration (Ziegler and Hamker 2011). The emphasis is on the difference: different actors, different disciplines coming together even though they are otherwise separate, perhaps indifferent or even opposed to each other. From such a collaborative starting point, we can critically draw from Gallie to spell out features of such concepts further, and so the remainder of this section will argue. The rise of the adjective – social innovation (frugal innovation, grassroots innovation, open innovation, responsible innovation, sustainable innovation, etc.) – makes innovation an internally complex and variously describable concept in a straightforward grammatical sense: due to the combination of noun and adjective, of ‘social’ and ‘innovation’, two terms are combined that can be variously described and – this is especially important – put into relation. Innovation can be studied with a view to outputs/ outcome, as a matter of process or both; this is a matter of research interest and purpose rather than one of contestation. However, such studies remain at least partially tautological if more is not said about the evaluative aspect put forward by the qualifiers. For example, in the phrase, ‘social innovation is innovation that is social in both its ends and its means’ (European Commission 2013, 5–6), the ‘social’ has simply been moved to the definition. In discussion, the social might refer to a utilitarian welfarism or to a change in power relations as a matter of social objectives (Ayob et al. 2016). These are ethical and political questions, to which a focus on innovation typologies can contribute – for example by investigating which social innovations really change power relations – but that it can hardly settle. The reason for this is that such empirical work presupposes theoretical accounts of ‘welfare’, ‘power’, etc. For this reason, collaboration across disciplines is called for to critically investigate the contours of the space created by social innovation. Inversely, philosophical or power analyses of the social are empty if they do not pay attention to the actual dynamics of innovators and networks in their respective social contexts. Thus, the adjective–noun combination of collaborative concepts offers an internally complex and variously describable space.19 This feature also accounts for the peculiar reciprocity in the use of social20 innovation: there must be a difference between the criteria used for the application of the noun and the criteria used for the application of the new combination, that is, of innovation and of social innovation respectively. Users of the new combination are pushed to note this difference in discussions of innovation versus social innovation, for example by calling the former ‘mainstream innovation’. This reciprocity is ‘peculiar’ as the evaluative aspect of the adjective promotes a language use of [qualifier+] innovation as something ‘better’ (quite the same effect is produced by the move from development to

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 15 sustainable development). However, such judgements are not self-evident; they call for justification. Reciprocity points to a further feature of collaborative concepts: novelty. The critique of the noun is a critique of the old (the established order associated with the noun, the mainstream, etc.), and it is accompanied by a practical proposal of something new. Novelty leads to questions of reference: novelty in relation to the state of the art in technology and the respective market (Havas 2016); novelty in relation to some social practice, etc. (Howaldt et al. 2014). Werner Rammert (2010, 29–32) speaks of the temporal and objective dimen- sions of the concept innovation respectively. As will be further discussed below, the specification of novelty in social innovation and the associated critique can be used quite differently: in an additive way, novelty highlights that there are other innovations beyond the market that should be noted. In a transformative way, novelty seeks to change the mainstream. Novelty is noteworthy in relation to another of Gallie’s criteria. Social innovation expresses a discontent with established ways and their failure to deliver on the promise of progress and development.21 Rephrasing Gallie, social innovation is not only open to changing circumstances, it is a response to changing circumstances. It arises as discourse when the discontent with innovation as we know it is so manifest that something new is called for. It is the diagnosis of problems with innovation in relation to the economy, and the need to reconfig- ure economy, state, civil society and science that fuels the rise of the adjective and animates various proposals and programmes of reconfiguration. This discontent points to the evaluative aspect as a further feature of collaborative concepts. For example, it is difficult to imagine an initiative pitching its work as a social innovation and not to thereby imply some sort of improvement. Likewise, researchers study such self-identifying improvers or they select putative innovators based on their own views of social improvements broadly speaking – they do not study, say, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a social innovation. In short, values, explicitly or implicitly, are a further feature of social innovation. ‘Social’ here refers to an ‘improved problem solu- tion’ or ‘progress from a certain perspective’ (Rammert 2010, 34). Subsequent chapters will pay particular attention to the evaluative-cognitive frames – of progress, improvement, sustainability, etc. – that play such an important (if often background) role in innovation research and practice. Valued achievements and exemplars as noted by Gallie are relevant for collaborative concepts, but in a modified way. On the one hand, there is the criticism of the old (the noun, such as development or innovation) and para- digmatic instances of it (that is technical-economic product innovation).22 On the other hand, there is the reference to the new as indicated by the adjective, which is unlikely to provide established valued achievements at least in relation to the old discourse.23 Put differently, there does not seem to be a widely

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 16 Innovation, ethics and our common futures shared paradigm of a social innovation. Thus, social innovation includes problematized references to the old, but is only weakly anchored in relation to widely shared exemplars of the new. Another way of putting this, inspired by an idea already present in Gallie’s work (Gallie 1956, 176), is to say that the reference to the old puts the users into a critical tradition of concept use that provides a common reference. The old establishes a tradition, but the new introduces a critical, prima facie open space and with it the possibility of a multi-faceted, progressive conversation. In conclusion, innovation as a collaborative concept comprises the following features: the adjective–noun schema that makes it internally complex and variously describable, novelty (comprising a double reference to both the old innovation in/for markets and the new object and its exemplars) and the evaluative aspect indicated by adjectives such as social, sustainable or responsible. Of these features, the schema is primary. It opens the space for collaboration and extends, in theory and practice, the range of disciplines and actors. The next two features further spell out the schema: novelty calls for clarification of the objects of the innovation. Are these products, or practices or …? The evaluative feature calls for a clarification of the subjects of the innovation: Who is involved? With what evaluative presuppositions and goals? Shareholder primacy in capitalist markets is but the extreme of a version of the social reduced to the relation of owners and managers for profit maximization. There are many other evaluative options on offer. In view of the many inter- and transdisciplinary research projects on social innovation, concept development is arguably moving in a collaborative rather than contestatory direction. In this sense, the collaborative concept proposal simply seems to capture conceptually something already happening in practice.

Ethics and Controversy

Does the evaluative aspect not reintroduce contestation? Yes, but in a modified way. There is something disconcerting about innovation as a collaborative concept. The discontent with mainstream innovation seems to be accompanied by a kind of complacency. For example, there is a diagnosis of apparent de-contestation in social innovation research (Ayob et al. 2016) as well as of (a)politics of social innovation policy (Edmiston 2016). Yet, social mar- ginalization and exclusion persist, economic and political inequality has not disappeared, nor has environmental unsustainability. In light of such serious challenges, should there not be contestation and politics? Does framing innovation as a collaborative concept perhaps even contribute to a complacency that brackets value differences and conflicts of interest? At this point it is useful to reconsider the role of ethics. In political philosophy, rival conceptions of justice and democracy – such as the liberal and

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 17 communitarian, republican and socialist conceptions discussed in the following chapters – are defended and justified, laying out one’s own conceptions, refuting arguments made by those holding other conceptions, objecting to those rival conceptions, etc. (the classic contribution to this is Rawls 1999a). Such contributions help articulate and better understand the evaluative issues at stake in innovation discourse, that is, their relation to justice, equality and the various conceptions of these values. They make a contribution to an improved understanding of innovation, and the various interests and value positions at stake. Such ethical and political theory contributions increase the controversy around innovation, as there is little prospect of ethicists and political theorists arriving at more than partial agreements. However, zooming out of the aca- demic controversy and looking at it from a distance, we can think of various ethical approaches as heuristics that articulate in a condensed way different views held in society, the reasons for and against them as well as important experiences and value insights derived from them. Thus, ethical controversy improves the overall understanding of the evaluative and normative aspects of innovation discourse. In short, local controversy is an overall contribution to collaborative concept formation. For the purpose of studying innovation, it is important not to exclusively focus on the contestation and justification of the philosophers. Much of the traditional focus on contestation is justification-based: who has the better argument for position x, can defeat position y etc. – a process that is simultaneously admired by outside observers and experienced as smug and clever, because of the apparent primacy of ‘being right’. However, we can also pause and note that different ethical theories and approaches come with different value sensibilities: values and principles, ways of asking questions that are particularly important to them, which are also illuminating for the general discussion. Theories and approaches afford unique perspectives to shed new light on innovation. Thus, we can think of ethical theories and approaches as discovery devices. A movement in twentieth-century art was Cubism. Cubist paintings by Braque, Picasso and other painters do not adopt a central perspective with which to mirror or represent reality. Rather, they suggest that in order to capture the riches of reality, we benefit from art that indicates the plurality of perspectives in reality. A lyre, a face, and a landscape in a Cubist painting are seen from different perspectives simultaneously. This polycentric approach yields at first sight unorderly paintings. The viewer does not know what is up or down, left or right. Many options are possible. There is a creative confusion. At second sight, the viewer discovers patterns – such as geometric forms – that seem shared by perspectives, that hold the painting together and that enable a rich experience. (Intriguingly, Picasso and other Cubist painters

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 18 Innovation, ethics and our common futures were influenced by masks from Africa and Oceania. The mask transforms the interest in the face – so evidently important for ethics and dialogue – into a quasi-minimalist search for a few central points, lines or colours that express and show. They can be carried by individuals, and experienced by the viewer, but thereby making them part of something bigger.) The Renaissance art that inspired Schumpeter to write his account of innovation society, the entrepreneur and the gale of creative destruction, is cele- brated for its discovery and mastery of the central, linear perspective offering greater realism and attention to the individual. If, in the process of discovery, we relax the idea of a central perspective, what will we discover about innovation and its role in society? Moving the Cubist metaphor into politics: what if the different perspectives were political parties – conservatives and progres- sives, green parties and (neo)-liberals, etc. Would it not be strange to wish the disappearance of all parties in favour of one central party? Is an expression of a variety of perspectives not a result of relatively free and equal societies? Does not this image rather suggest that giving up a central perspective can hardly be identified with a convenient or uncaring relativism? Moving from the Renaissance central perspective to a polycentric Cubism, not only can we identify various, valuable philosophical perspectives, we can also rediscover Hermes’ lyre and the other objects of innovators as we will see in the next chapter.

1.3 ETHICS: SUFFICIENCY AS A STARTING POINT

There are many ethical theories and approaches with which to think about innovation. In this section, I will sketch my starting position, whereas subsequent chapters introduce and discuss further positions: liberal in Chapter 3, communitarian and capabilitarian in Chapter 4, republican and socialist in Chapter 5. The idea is to follow Gallie’s insight and to consider this starting position in a context of other plausible ethical perspectives that together enrich our overall understanding. The goal is to arrive at a deeper understanding of ethics and its relation to innovation research and practice. This will be the topic of Chapter 6. ‘Nature-respecting sufficiency’24 starts with the double exploration within justice of a minimum threshold and of respect for upper limits to resource use. A reflection on ‘enough’ helps explain this, perhaps initially surprising, double exploration. Harry Frankfurt noted that ‘having enough’ can mean that any more would yield unpleasant results (1987, 37). For instance, perhaps you really enjoy eating an ice cream cone so you want to have another one. Afterwards you regret this choice as it makes you feel sick. A limit has been reached. Eco-sufficient discourse highlights how consumer democracies are driven by dynamics of marketing and profitability that structurally lead to

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 19 overconsumption. However, ‘having enough’ can also be used as a way of saying that a requirement or standard has been met. In this use, there is no implication that more would be bad. Rather, ‘enough’ here might mean that a person has enough food to nourish themselves, sufficient access to good education, etc. It is this standard or requirement that is the focus of the sufficientarian theory of distributive justice. For sustainability, the intuitive appeal derives from both aspects of sufficiency: a focus on basic needs, on those most in need; and a focus on the need to limit production and consumption given current, global unsustainability. Beyond such initial appeal, there is a need of clarification and justification.25 How to think of the thresholds in a non-metaphorical, conceptually sound way? Who is considered, and in relation to what threshold needs? In response to such questions, my starting position draws on ideas from environmental ethics (Taylor 1986) and political philosophy (Nussbaum 2006). These questions lead to a conception of nature-respecting sufficiency as a normative idea for thinking about innovation to be sketched in the next sections. This idea, as is often the case with normative ideas, might seem distant given our current ways of producing and consuming. As such it can provide a regulative role for thinking about innovation. In turn, innovation as a way of thinking about social change provides ideas for pathways towards normative ideals. In this spirit, Chapter 6 will return to the relation of nature-respecting sufficiency and the theory and practice of innovation.

The Currency of Sufficiency

The sufficientarian position taken here adopts for the threshold specification capabilities as the category of evaluation: the real opportunities of people to do and to be what they have reason to value.26 For reflection on innovation it invites a shift from a focus on objects and things as ends of innovation, to one on doings and beings as the evaluative unit for thinking about outcomes and the processes of innovation (Ziegler 2010). It offers a plural unit of capabilities for thinking about the improvements and harms of social innovation noted in Section 1.1. A well-known version of such a position is Martha Nussbaum’s theory of basic justice that spells out the concept of dignity via a list of central capabilities as entitlements of basic justice (Nussbaum 2000; 2006; 2011; Robeyns 2017b, 153): (1) life, (2) bodily health, (3) bodily integrity, (4) sense, imagination and thought, (5) emotion, (6) practical reason, (7) affiliation, (8) other species, (9) play and (10) control over one’s environment (political and material). ‘Sufficiency’, as used here, adopts Nussbaum’s focus on dignity as a way of identifying central capabilities and functionings.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 20 Innovation, ethics and our common futures

Agency

Central to the capabilities approach is a focus on human agency. In the writings of Amartya Sen, this focus emerges in response to his objection to theories and policies of development that treat human beings as means rather than ends (Sen 1999). Such policies legitimate the priority of economic growth and developmental policies over democracy, education and culture with the claim that such goods will follow later, once people are affluent enough to afford freedom. By contrast, Sen puts the emphasis on an ‘agent-oriented view’ (Sen 1999, 11) that highlights the intrinsic and instrumental value of agency for justice and development, and with it the freedom aspect of innovation (and resistance to it) noted in Section 1.1. An agent is:

someone who acts and brings about change, and whose achievement can be judged in terms of her own values and objectives, whether or not we assess them in terms of some external criteria as well … the individual as a member of the public and as a participant in economic, social and political actions. (Sen 1999, 18)

The focus on acting and bringing about change, situates the capabilities approach within traditions of political philosophy that emphasize the need not just to look at formal rights but also at the real opportunities to exercise and enjoy them. As Nussbaum puts it, ‘each person as an end and as a source of agency’ (Nussbaum 2000, 69). The idea of persons as ends is particularly clear in political agency, and the discussion of values, norms, laws and policies governing social life. Such agency requires the capacity to reflect, to discuss, to decide and to bring about – including to decide not to participate (Nussbaum 2006, 184f.). Thus agency, in the sense used here is very different from the agent in economic theory, who is supposed to act on behalf of a principal (Sen 1999, 19). Rather, agency is intrinsically linked to the capacity of valuing, reflecting, discussing and acting on one’s values. Elizabeth Anderson has proposed a capabilitarian sufficientarian position called ‘democratic equality’ (2010, 83, italics added):

The fundamental requirement of democracy is that citizens stand in relations of equality to one another. Citizens have a claim to a capability set sufficient to enable them to function as equals in society (assuming they have the potential to do so). Democratically relevant functionings include adequate safety, health and nutrition, education, mobility and communication, the ability to interact with others without stigma, and to participate in the system of cooperation.

Democratic equality underscores the interrelation of political agency and other capabilities. In her sufficientarian view, ‘citizens are entitled to enough education, for example, to be able to advance informed claims in public forums,

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 21 at a level of articulateness that elicits a respectful hearing’ (Anderson 2010, 83–4, italics added). Rather than thinking of citizens as representative individuals that are ulti- mately the same, the capabilities approach suggests that treating citizens as equals calls for a focus on the diversity of individuals and their contexts, and with it on the question of when differences turn into disadvantage. Nussbaum’s list of central capabilities offers a comprehensive starting point for considering the agency of citizens.27 However, it would be too narrow to think of agency only in terms of political decision-making. Rutger Claassen (2017, 1286) notes that society does not consist of ‘atomistic’ individuals that somehow meet in society. Agency is always already exercised and moves in and between social practices. Agency concerns participation possibilities in these practices (that is not only as citizens within political institutions). Autonomous and free agency,28 he claims, requires navigational agency, that is individuals who can choose practices as well as deal with conflicts between them (Claassen 2017, 1290). They have to be able to enter and exit social practices, to reform and create social practices (Claassen 2017, 1290–1). According to Claassen, the specification of capabilities required for agency are to be developed within the respective historical context and via a consideration of those practices and associated capabilities that are mandatory for navigation: for example, education and health (Claassen 2017, 1293). His social practice perspective at this point overlaps with the democratic equality of Anderson, but highlights navigational agency as a focus to clarify sufficientarian requirements for agency across the entire range of social practices. Again Nussbaum’s comprehensive but abstract list of central capabilities provides a good starting point for thinking about and spelling out such capabilities in context.29

Principles of Distribution

At first sight, a section on principles of distribution might seem to beg the question: is sufficientarianism not the view that a minimum threshold is required for justice? That there is really only one principle: sufficiency? Already Anderson’s concept of ‘democratic equality’ points to a more com- plicated situation. Equality? How can equality have a place in a sufficientarian approach? Drawing on Nussbaum’s Aristotle-inspired capabilities, Lasse Nielsen and David Axelsen (2017) distinguish three types of capabilities: in relation to biological and physical human needs, in relation to social interests of individuals, and in relation to their interests as autonomous individuals. The biological category, they suggest, is non-positional: distribution here only must be ‘enough’ in a minimum threshold sense. If I have sufficient drinking

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 22 Innovation, ethics and our common futures water, so they argue, it does not really matter very much for my nutritional need if somebody else has ten times this amount of drinking water. By contrast, the social category, they argue (Nielsen and Axelsen 2017, 52f. following Nussbaum and Anderson), is positional: political freedoms, freedom of assembly and of association require equality. It is not enough for me to have one vote if my neighbour has ten. Here the principle is equality, underscoring the importance of Anderson’s insistence on democratic equality. A focus on principles demonstrates the important relational aspect of sufficiency. Their last category refers to ‘quasi-positional’ capabilities. Rational reflection, imagination, critical thinking and normative evaluation in their view can be conceived of in terms of a sufficientarian threshold, but there is a need to consider pressures from external factors. ‘A person’s opportunity for getting a meaningful job that is appropriate to her level and type of education is not only dependent on her personal capacities and acquired skills but also on competition from other human agents and social norms’ (Nielsen and Axelsen 2017, 56). In sum, their argument suggests ‘thresholds in plural’ (Nielsen and Axelsen 2017, 51). The sufficientarianism proposed here as a starting position endorses the plurality of capabilities and the respective questions of distributive logic raised by them. However, it does not follow the specific suggestion that the biological category is non-positional. It is true that some aspects depend on personal traits (such as one’s metabolism and bodily condition, for example being pregnant), but much also depends on social and environmental traits. In an area with water shortage, the water consumption of my neighbour does affect my capability. In times of drought, cities in California and South Africa seek to enforce bans on water consumption for green lawns etc. precisely for this reason. Likewise, my neighbour’s exploitation of water might affect my capability in the future, if she takes out more than can be regenerated sustainably. Thus, a similar reasoning applies as for the category of autonomous individuals. They are quasi-positional: there are sufficientarian reasons to consider distribution so as to promote and secure the individual capability ‘from external pressure’ (Nielsen and Axelsen 2017, 57). Turning to patiency, it becomes evident how pervasive these quasi-positional reasons are.

Patiency

Anderson’s democratic equality assumes that citizens ‘have the potential to do so’ (Anderson 2010, 83). Put differently, members of the community might contingently or permanently not have this potential. Children have limited or developed capacities for deliberation and acting on reflected goals. A severe accident can prevent a person permanently from such deliberation and action.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 23

As Anderson notes, ‘additional principles must be supplied for such issues’ (Anderson 2010, 84). Is this just a matter of additional principles? Of children and future gen- erations? Legal practice in many countries has moved to further recognize non-human animals. Environmental ethics has pushed the boundaries of community via sentientism to biocentrism to holism (Gorke 2010). Whatever one’s position in such debates, environmental ethics suggests that the community of justice is larger than the domain of human agents. The proposed way of exploring this point here is to consider contingent and permanent patiency, understood as an aspect of living beings that is, contingently or permanently, not based on the bringing about of goals and objectives based on reflection and deliberation, choice of instruments, etc. Dignity is not limited to agency. Rather, we can and should consider the dignity of patiency. Partly, this is out of mere self-interest: we are all (potential) patients to some extent and in some contexts; partly, this is out of consideration for the ends of others. Nussbaum has recognized this point, and proposes a sentientist boundary of justice as a realistic utopia for our time (Nussbaum 2006). As the concept of realistic utopia indicates, this proposal is informed by her pragmatic-political diagnosis. It is not a systematic implication of a philosophical approach based on flourishing. Her specific boundary proposal and the importance it attributes to sentience has been critiqued as arbitrary and inconsistent (Wolf 2012, 52). As the biological, social and autonomous-intellectual capability types noted above already indicated, the concept of flourishing at the basis of the capabilities approach includes life as such. It is not difficult to identify the functioning needs of living bodies, be it humans or non-humans. As in the case of children, the autonomy part might be missing or reduced, but this does not preclude the identification of functionings (Anderson 2010, 94). The potential to function here is not so much a matter of autonomous choice, but rather of bodily and contextual traits that enable flourishing. Paul Taylor has recognized this point, drawing a distinction of moral agents and moral patients (or synonymously, subjects, Taylor 1986, 13). ‘Perhaps the most ethically significant fact about moral subjects’, he notes, ‘is that it is always possible for a moral agent to take a moral subject’s standpoint and make judgements from its standpoint about how it ought to be treated. The standard implicit in such judgements is the furtherance or preservation of well-being of the subject, not of the one who does the judging’ (Taylor 1986, 17). This yields a flourishing test of moral consideration: are moral agents able to identify a good of the subject without reference to any other entity, and thus its instrumental uses for others (Taylor 1986, 61)? In Taylor’s philosophy this leads to a normative position that recognizes and respects the flourishing of all life,30 once we note that our knowledge

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 24 Innovation, ethics and our common futures of the evolution of life places us as living beings among other living beings, who have their own good and who cannot be demonstrated to be inferior to us. Rather, ideas of human superiority (in the Western tradition) are the likely remnants of a pre-evolutionary, dualist Cartesian worldview or different Christian worldviews. By contrast, the attitude of respect for nature is supported by a worldview informed by evolutionary theory and ecology. This worldview and attitude has implications for our thinking about central capabilities. Nielsen and Axelsen claim that some capabilities related to physical needs are non-positional. This argument depends on the assumption that the relevant resources are freely available. To revisit the example: while 120 litres of freshwater per day for me might be fully sufficient for my domestic needs so that it does not matter if my neighbour has 240 or 1200 litres, it does not follow that this water is not taken from other beings in a way that harms their well-being. For example, the growth in consumptive use of water for agriculture and energy is a key cause for the enormous pressure on aquatic ecosystems worldwide (Ziegler et al. 2017). The more general point is sug- gested by the example: it is prima facie not irrelevant what happens above the threshold, that is, when basic interests have been met. Rather, consumption above the threshold is very likely to interfere with the good of others. In a study correlating human development with a sustainability index, this point has been demonstrated by Neumayer (2010): the top countries of human development, as tracked by the Human Development Index, are generally strongly unsustainable, as tracked by the ecological footprint index.

Sufficiency as Limit

Turning to enough as limit, the discourse of limits to growth and its revival in national eco-space boundaries and then planetary boundaries discussions, suggests a use of sufficiency that calls for a reduction in production and consumption. ‘The idea broadly demands that human beings should limit their consumption in order to remain below a level that would be “too much” in terms of harmful emissions and resource extraction – in other words, to remain below a maximum’ (Spengler 2016, 925). Currently, the most widely discussed limit of this nature is the warming upper limit in climate change policy, that is, an increase of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius decided on in the 2015 Paris COP21 climate agreement. It is argued for on a number of grounds: moving to an even higher degree of warming would yield unpredictable risk to societies and ecosystems; this would especially harm the global poor, who might lack the technological means for climate adaptation; this would lead to further forced migration with unpredictable consequences for social stability and peace; it would further accelerate the sixth mass extinction of species (to name but the more prominent grounds).

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 25

These reasons are well known. Noteworthy is the specification of environmental limits in terms of resources and environmental goods (CO2, water consumption, nitrates, etc.; see Rockström et al. 2009). Moreover, the focus is not primarily on ‘my CO2 consumption’ in comparison to yours, but on levels that are relevant for the functioning of the system. For example, tipping points of the global climate system that via extreme weather events undermine secure shelter. Respect for nature has important implications for sufficiency as limit. The notion of relevant harm is extended beyond harm to humans. For example, in climate ethics, this extends the community of moral patients that is put at risk via anthropogenic climate change (Nolt 2011b), from changes to habitats and conditions of flourishing that force migration and shift ranges to the extinction of species that cannot adapt quickly enough (Parmesan and Matthews 2005). It also further motivates reduction efforts. Reduction reduces harm; as John Nolt points out, this point even applies to so-called ‘negligible quantities’ (Nolt 2011a).31 More radically, nature-respecting sufficientarianism challenges the standard conception of resource as limit. The standard conception of resource as limit is that of an upper limit that might be reached after considerable economic growth. Any use of resources above the one required for reaching the dignity threshold is likely to be at a cost to other members of the community and their ability to enjoy a sufficient minimum. I therefore speak of a resource threshold (that complements the capability threshold). It is a sufficientarian, instrumental consideration, as the argument is not based on an intrinsic problem with some having more resources than others as such, but with the effects of high consumption on others.32 This turns the resource limits into a resource sufficiency threshold as a starting point – whereas ‘simple’ sufficientarianism by contrast is typically associated with distributive agnosticism beyond the threshold. Respect for nature provokes the shift in the burden of justification: as we live in a doubly full world, not only with 8 billion people but also myriad other creatures everywhere, there are prima facie no free resources. The key question becomes the justification of consumption and production beyond the resource threshold of living in dignity. Assuming that there are indifferent or synergetic ways of producing and consuming that do not harm other members of the community or that even improve their positions, there is possible extension (and innovation) beyond the resource threshold – yet this cannot just be taken for granted. Instrumental considerations of unequal distribution are not only an environmental matter. Ingrid Robeyns has provided arguments that support economic limits (Robeyns 2017a, 6ff.).33 First, economic inequality undermines political equality.34 Based on work by Thomas Christiano (2012), she notes that the financially affluent can use their wealth to buy votes, for agenda-setting,

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 26 Innovation, ethics and our common futures to influence public opinion and for lobbying to undermine democratic policy-making (for example, via the threat to move production elsewhere). Second, she argues from unmet urgent needs (Robeyns 2017a, 11ff.): the financial resource of the affluent could be used to finance the fight against extreme poverty and deprivation as well as collective action problems that require government action. She argues for limitarianism as the view that it is ‘not morally permissible to have more resources than are needed to fully flourish in life. Limitarianism views having riches or wealth to be the state in which one has more resources than are needed and claims that, in such a case, one has too much, morally speaking’ (Robyens 2017a, 1). Limitarianism has an instrumentally motivated egalitarian tendency. However, its focus on a ‘fully flourishing life’ suggests a higher level of resources than flourishing in relation to central capabilities (Robyens 2017a, 24). If the latter is defined relatively generously, the two might coincide; if it is defined very restrictively, there is a space between leading a life in dignity and being rich (in the morally permissible way). Either way, the consideration of resource use with a view to a moral community of all life puts pressure on economic limitarianism to move the justificatory burden and ask what economic resource use beyond dignity is justified. In conclusion of this section on sufficiency as limit: First, in the environmental discourse the limit is focused on resources and environmental goods rather than capabilities. Second, the discourse tends to focus on them as part of systems (the climate, the water cycle etc.). Will a higher absolute level of

CO2 provoke a system imbalance with harmful consequences? How emissions are distributed within the system is secondary for this question. A beneficial implication of this point, at least from a capabilities perspective, is that unequal distribution of resources can be consistent with such limits in consideration of heterogeneity of contexts – say more energy requirements of somebody living in a cold climate. By contrast in the economic case, distribution is of primary importance due to the relative power of the rich over the poor. The reason, however, is also systemic. Unequal distribution undermines democratic politics: the rich have too great an opportunity to lobby for their interests, while the least advantaged might be entirely excluded from participating. Third, nature-respecting sufficientarianism leads to some alignment of capabilitarian thresholds and resource limits. Rather than asking how much we can maxi- mally produce and consume and stay within a ‘safe space’ (Rockström et al. 2009), it suggests as primary questions: What resources do moral agents need to lead a dignified life? What resource use above this level is justified because it is synergetic with the dignity of all members of the moral community? To be sure, the system questions remain very important here too. However, they are not oriented by a maximization perspective, but by one of enough resources.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 27

There is an emerging research line in ecological economics that points in the direction of these questions: noting that there is currently no national economy that meets basic needs without transgressing environmental limits, it asks what changes in provisioning systems we need to meet needs sustainably (O’Neill et al. 2018). Given current unsustainability trends, all this raises numerous questions regarding not only technical but also social innovation. For the exploration of these questions, the book focuses mainly on nation states and in particular the European and North American states from which the innovation discourse mainly emerged, and who therefore also have a special responsibility to reflect on the role of innovation in the light of persistent unsustainability trends. Nation states also by and large remain the most powerful actors for developing a critical sustainability innovation policy, including supporting policies (for example taxation) as well as for all major implementations of international sustainability agreements such as for climate and biodiversity (as discussed further in Chapter 6).

1.4 A COLLABORATIVE PHILOSOPHY OF INNOVATION

The collaborative concept framework seeks to explicate and make available for reflection a space for a variety of disciplines and actors that in their different ways contribute to the formation of innovation as a concept for a third-order innovation society. The framework proposes the adjective–noun schema, novelty as well as the evaluative aspect of social innovation as key features that research and practice on innovation needs to reflect on. In this way, it seeks to promote a progressive conversation about innovation, rather than a progressive competition about the one best way of defining the concept. This collaborative aspect implies a need to listen to the contributions of various social sciences on innovation. This will be the major task for Chapter 2. The survey of innovation in the social sciences there will show the limitations of the technical innovation for commercial use focus in the mainstream discourse, and place this discourse in a larger context. These empirical and ontological issues about what innovation is and where it happens are a crucial step for a less biased investigation of innovation, justice and sustainability. Which ideas for innovations are currently invisible, blocked or poorly supported simply because they do not fit the mainstream discourse? What are the alternatives, perhaps already existing at the margin of innovation society? Recall Braille and the invention of a system for reading and writing. During the course of her studies, Hilary Scanlon, an undergraduate student, lost almost all her eyesight due to opsoclonus-myoclonus syndrome. Very simple tasks such as properly disposing of waste in public space became difficult for her. ‘As a person who wants to retain her basic dignity, I don’t feel comfortable

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 28 Innovation, ethics and our common futures touching this [waste bins in public space to find out what belongs where]’.35 In response, she designed a prototype of rubber mats that indicate position and type of various bins, thereby making them accessible to the blind. So far, so good and so important. Yet also so familiar as far as a focus on individual innovators is concerned. Just as important to note therefore is that she early on received funding from her university to develop her ideas further, that there was a social entrepreneurship course for doing this as part of her education, eventually making her the first student social entrepreneur in residence. In short, that there was a social system that encouraged her initiative to retain dignity and navigational agency. With this point we turn to ethics. On the basis of this wider view of innovation in society, Chapters 3 to 6 will turn to evaluative perspectives on innovation. This follows the idea of a Cubist approach that is open and enriched by a variety of perspectives, rather than one central perspective. Many philosophical perspectives have insights to offer, and the subsequent chapters seek to harvest those. At the same time, this presentation is not ‘a view from nowhere’ but rather a dialogue with an evaluative starting point: the sufficientarian position sketched above. This position is not more central than others; however, I would like to suggest that it might be especially apt for a transformative contribution that is a discussion of innovation and its role for overcoming current unsustainability and injustice. In light of persistent pro-innovation bias this is an important point that requires repetition and insistence. To borrow a drastic example from the Cubist inspiration above: one of Picasso’s most well-known paintings is Guernica. It was painted in 1937 in the aftermath of warplanes of the German Condor Legion attacking the Basque town Guernica. The Germans supported their fascist ally General Franco in the fight against the Republicans. Guernica was a place of the Republican resistance movement. On 26 April 1937 the planes attacked with incendiary bombs, invented in 1918 in Germany but only used nineteen years later by the Condor Legion to aid in the destruction of the urban centre. The military innovation quickly spread and was reinvented during the Second World War. German, British and American forces used it to cause destruction in British, German and Japanese cities. In Picasso’s painting the bombing appears as an attack on life: there is a grieving woman with a dead child, a horse in agony, a dead soldier on the ground, a woman entrapped by fire. Black and white only are used to create a jumbled impression with various perspectives in a confined space. Ethnographer and poet Michel Leiris comments: ‘On a black and white canvas that depicts ancient tragedy, Picasso also writes our letter of doom: all that we love is going to be lost’ (quoted in Martin 2003, 129). The face of a woman somehow floats into the room with a flame-lit lamp bearing witness to the scene, and a dying dove on the wall forms a crack in the wall that lets in some light. Leiris continues: ‘and that is

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 29 why it is necessary that we gather up all that we love, like the emotion of great farewells, in something of unforgettable beauty’. Guernica, the Second World War and genocide might seem ‘long ago’ for many citizens of affluent nations with their advanced innovation systems. However, consider ‘ecocide’: in view of an unprecedented decline of nature and species in human history, the 2019 UN-IPBES Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, calls for a ‘transformative change’ (Díaz et al. 2019). ‘Technological innovation’ appears in the report as part of the problem: an ‘indirect driver’ of ‘accelerated, global change of nature during the past 50 years’ (Díaz et al. 2019, B3). But innovation also appears as a ‘key lever- age point’ of ‘transformation for sustainability’: ‘ensuring environmentally friendly technological and social innovation, taking into account potential rebound effects and investment regimes’ (Díaz et al. 2019, D3). The report with its ecological Guernica message provides ample grounds for thinking deeply about innovation, justice and sustainability – and for doing so in a critical way that enables a transition from second-order innovation society to a more reflective use of innovation. Hermes as a god of commercial wealth is an impoverished messenger. Rather, it is important to think of the messenger as one of many goods and of plural values that must be witnessed for a richer understanding of innovation and development, however jumbled and messy. For this, the next chapter will first turn to the varieties of innovation discussed in the social sciences.

NOTES

1. This chapter is derived in part from an article published in Innovation – The European Journal of Social Science Research on 18 July 2017, © 2015 Taylor & Francis, available online: https://doi .org/10.1080/13511610.2017.1348935. 2. ‘Evaluative’ includes concepts and predicates such as good or bad, better or worse, desirable or undesirable; normative operators such as right or wrong, ought and may (List and Valentini 2016). At first sight, innovation with its promise of improvement has a clearly evaluative aspect. Yet upon reflection, normative aspects are not far away: on the one hand, the freedom of the innovator, and on the other, the harm of those negatively affected by innovations; on the one hand, the innovation contribution to basic needs/human rights and sustainability, and on the other, the question of whether innovation can be directed in such a way. For simplicity, I use ‘evaluative’ as short for ‘evaluative and normative’ where appropriate. 3. See https://www .lexico.com/en/definition/innovate, last accessed 25.8.2019. 4. On reification and innovation see Hellström 2004. 5. As later chapters will have ample opportunity to show, this human need can be performed in many different ways and with different modes of innovation, including the techno-utopia where the need is entirely met via the labour of machines and robots. 6. This description is inspired by Beckert 2016, who draws on Bourdieu and Marx.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 30 Innovation, ethics and our common futures

7. See http://ec .europa.eu/research/innovation -union/ index.cfm, last accessed 18.6.2018. 8. But Schumpeter was not the first to use the term. See Godin 2012 on the history of innovation. 9. This ‘innovation frontier’ is neither new nor distinctively capitalist. As Bernstein (2019) shows, liberating humans transgressing boundaries of time (and space) was also a preoccupation throughout the history of the Soviet Union. 10. In the same work, Rogers defines reinvention as ‘the degree to which an innovation is changed or modified by a user in the process of its adoption’ (Rogers 1983, 16). 11. See for example the widely used Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https:// plato.stanford.edu, last accessed 23.4.2019) and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://www .rep.routledge.com, last accessed 23.4.2019). 12. The discussion of distributive justice at least in part originates with a discussion of income (in)equality in standard welfare economics. As we will see in Chapter 2, welfare economics, at least as a branch of standard economics, also has difficulties in conceptually dealing with innovation due to a focus on comparable products in competitive markets. 13. A further conceptual proposal, quasi concepts, has been explored for innovation research (Jenson and Harrisson 2013; Jenson 2015). For reasons of space I cannot discuss this here, but see my discussion in Ziegler 2017b. 14. Gallie’s contribution provoked a wide-ranging discussion in the social sciences and humanities. For a comprehensive overview see Collier et al. 2006. 15. See Lukes 1974. Many concepts do have a widely shared appreciative aspect, and as a result are taken for granted. Most of the discussion therefore focuses not on the sceptical discussion of the concept as such, but on various conceptions (of democracy, of justice, etc.). Still, concept users are free to debunk and de-mask the problems, confusions or illusions they detect with the concept, and reject it as a whole. I will return to this point in the discussion of transitional-sceptical uses below (see Chapter 2). 16. Incidentally, Gallie’s further qualifier ‘essential’ and the relativism it seems to invite, render this goal additionally problematic within Gallie’s framework. The problems with a relativist reading are discussed in depth by Swanton 1985. 17. In political philosophy, the terminology of concept and conception has been influentially introduced by Rawls (1999a, 4–5). Rawls assumes that we can agree on the core components at least on the vague level. However, what is or is not a core component is itself an ethical question that is highly relevant for subsequent considerations of relevance (Freeden 1996, 56f.). 18. This is not to say that this space cannot be ‘captured’, but already the ‘capturing’ image indicates there is more to such concepts than a manipulative use (that is green-washing). 19. Swanton points out that one way to specify a concept is in terms of a schema or canonical form (Swanton 1985, 812). This is the road taken here for theorizing about social innovation as an adjective–noun schema. An alternative route, often associated with John Rawls, is to postulate a shared, substantive core that is interpreted differently. In the contested concept literature, this yields the identification of elements of a concept (see for example Jacobs 1999). The resulting problem is that the ‘elements’ themselves are contested (Freeden 1996). The schematic approach does not face this problem, and is in addition open to any claims regarding widely shared ‘elements’. A third way is to develop a concept from a para-

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access Introduction to innovation and ethics: a collaborative philosophy 31

digm, and exemplary case. In analogy to the ‘elements’ problem, this way faces the challenge that innovation as a collaborative concept does not seem to rest on widely shared exemplars. A partial variant to the identification of ‘elements’ is the ‘mapping sentence’ approach (Cnaan and Vinokur-Kaplan 2015, 7ff.). According to this approach, ‘facets’ are identified. Cnaan and Vinokur-Kaplan propose: what is being invented, who benefits, the innovator, and magnitude of innovation as such ‘facets’. These facets, just like the elements above, can be interpreted differently. Consequently, innovation paths can be determined by identifying how a specific innovation interprets the respective facet. In this way, a diversity of innovation pathways can be identified. Just as with the elements approach, the mapping sentence approach faces the challenge that others might propose different facets and further interpretations. For research and policy this will lead to evaluative questions of purpose, and hence limits the possibility proposed by Cnaan and Vinokur-Kaplan to ‘deliver a universe of observations to make explicit in a reliable way which items belong the content universe and which do not’ (Cnaan and Vinokur-Kaplan 2015, 7). 20. Or sustainable, responsible, etc. As noted above, I use ‘social’ here as a shortcut, as it appears to be the most generic of the terms. 21. The history of (social) innovation is complex. (Social) innovation first had a negative connotation (Godin 2012) – as a challenge to established religious and political order – then lost this connotation via the business and technological innovation discourse, and now has a predominantly positive evaluative connotation, though this might be changing again. 22. Problematized references to the old require a shared problem perception, at least in a broad sense. At the most general level, I have identified this with a shared discontent with the economic processes of the twentieth century, and the implications for the natural world as well as social justice. Negative appraisal (unsustainability, inequality) is a less demanding route to shared discussion than positive appraisal. Note again that this point leaves plenty of space for moderate or radical ways of understanding this discontent; a point returned to below in the discussion of major uses of innovation as a collaborative concept (see Chapter 2). 23. Or will select for valued achievements that are at least in part quite compatible with the old. Hence the appeal of Muhammad Yunus and micro-credit as a much more widely discussed social achievement then say alternative currencies and eco-villages (for research cases of such networks see the EU Project Transit: http:// www.transitsocialinnovation.eu/ , last accessed 16.4.2019) or the long-term social innovations associated with the welfare or social state such as social housing or freshwater supply (for research cases in this respect see part two of Nicholls and Ziegler 2019). 24. This section is based on a paper on ‘nature-respecting sufficiency’ (Ziegler 2019a), and the longer discussion there. 25. For a detailed discussion of such questions and various sufficientarian positions in this respect see Fourie and Rid 2017. 26. This is by no means an original move. Already capability-pioneer Martha Nussbaum’s theory of basic justice takes a sufficientarian focus. Many capability theorists have developed further positions in this direction (Claassen 2017; Fourie and Rid 2017; Nielsen and Axelsen 2017; Ziegler et al. 2017). Capabilities and functionings as such can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or simply irrelevant (‘capability to write long footnotes’). It is the respective purpose of the theory or practice that specifies capabilities and functionings further.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access 32 Innovation, ethics and our common futures

27. While Anderson and Nussbaum both take sufficientarian positions (Robeyns 2016), Nussbaum’s list considers more capabilities than those required for the agency of citizens, and there is a long-standing debate over the status and desira- bility of such a list (see Claassen 2010). 28. ‘Autonomous’ in Claassen’s terminology refers to deliberation on goals and instruments to achieve them; ‘freedom’ to the realization of these goals in practice (Claassen 2017, 1282). 29. However, as noted with the difference that ‘dignity’ rather than ‘agency’ is the organizing concept, which as further discussed below also allows us to include considerations of ‘patiency’. 30. As he notes, the consideration of other beings as ends is not to be confused with the idea that the same concepts and instruments – for example rights – can be used in the same way across all beings. 31. This paragraph is based on Ziegler 2016. 32. Breena Holland (2014) calls the environment a ‘meta-capability’, in the sense of a precondition that is necessary for central human capabilities. Others have criti- cized the terminology: the environment is not a capability (Robeyns 2017b, 171). The sufficientarian starting point here takes into account Holland’s argument, as well as the terminology critique (via the language of material boundaries and limits rather than ‘meta-capability’). However, it also seeks to leave space and consider the functionings and capabilities of patients, and thus generally moves beyond an instrumental perspective on the environment. 33. Robeyns’ limitarianism considered affluence above the level of ‘riches’, not above the level of a sufficient minimum. Her instrumental arguments, however, apply just as well as with respect to the sufficient minimum. They do not apply to the zone between a sufficientarian minimum and the level of riches. Depending on how high or low the respective thresholds are defined, there is considerable ‘middle’ [class] space or in the extreme no space at all: sufficiency and riches coincide. 34. For further effects of economic inequality on biodiversity see Mikkelson et al. 2007. 35. Citation from the video accessible at https://www .universityaffairs.ca/ features/ feature-article/ from -the-classroom-to-the-community/, last accessed 25.8.2019. Information about this case from accompanying article by Anqi Shen 2018.

Rafael Ziegler - 9781789904543 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 09/29/2021 10:48:51AM via free access