Good versus bad tourism: Homo viator’s responsibility in light of life-value onto-axiology | Giorgio Baruchello (2015)

Tourism, like any other dimension of human agency, is no stranger to ethical and axiological assessment. As the pivotal World Tourism Organization’s (WTO) (1999) Global Code of Ethics for Tourism (GCET) asserts, if ethically conducted, ‘tourism’ is capable of ‘contributing to economic development, international understanding, peace, prosperity and universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms’. By implication, if tourism is not ethically conducted, some of the above goods may be diminished. In essence, depending on who gives shape to it and how, tourism can be good; or it can be bad.

Who is to say what is good and bad, though? On what ground can this kind of judgement be passed? How can assertions like those contained in GCET, which was adopted in 2001 by the United Nations (UN), be assessed and, if challenged, defended? Questions of this variety have kept philosophers busy for centuries and a number of answers have been provided over the long history of the discipline – far too much for a sheer book chapter like the present one. Rather, in what follows, whilst keeping the ground-breaking GCET in the background, I endorse, outline and apply john McMurtry’s life-value onto-axiology, which is in all probability the most articulate theory of value developed by any philosopher in the 21st century. By doing so, given that the reader of this book is more likely to be a scholar in tourism studies than an academic philosopher, I offer first a detailed yet succinct presentation of a significant development in contemporary philosophical thought. Secondly, I offer a set of criteria whereby the reader can think about, and discriminate between, good and bad tourism, grounding GCET and any analogous normative approach to tourism in as deep a source of value as philosophical thought can retrieve. Moreover, as the paragraphs below show, the criteria offered by life-value onto-axiology are pertinent to the science and politics of tourism in the Anthropocene, neoliberalism and the global age, theorizing the Earth and humanity, carbon-fuelled capitalism and the end of nature and society – all of these being central themes of the present volume. I conclude this chapter by reflecting upon our being homines viatores in light of the implications of life-value onto-axiology for human agency, tourism included.

Introducing “Ten Essays In Honour of John McMurtry – January 6, 2024 by Jeff Noonan (Author), Giorgio Baruchello (Author)”

This Festschrift collects ten essays — plus an explanatory appendix by John McMurtry — honouring the scope and influence of his life-value onto-axiology (LVOA) and related ideas such as the civil commons. The volume opens with Jeff Noonan’s introduction and Giorgio Baruchello’s survey of McMurtry’s intellectual biography and core concepts, then advances applied and theoretical developments across ethics, public health, political economy, science policy, pedagogy, and food systems. Chapters examine the life-ground of value versus money-sequenced capitalism and the climate emergency (Card), a research horizon for the life-capital synthesis (Noonan), grounding social determinants of health in life-value (Watson), a virtues-based path within LVOA (Myers), two decades of “system-cooked science” (Olivieri), a practical learning program for the life-capital solution (Sahely), and civil-commons-oriented reform of food systems (Sumner & Mustapha), alongside a personal tribute (Barrington). McMurtry’s appendix restates the Primary Axiom of Value and the universal human life necessities, anchoring the contributions in a common evaluative grammar. Together, the essays argue that policies, institutions, and practices are good insofar as they coherently enable wider ranges of thought, felt being, and action across persons and ecologies, and are bad insofar as they disable them.

Social Philosophy and Oncology | G. Baruchello and E. Hjörleifsdóttir (2014)

McMurtry’s work offers a contribution to the understanding, as well as to development of standards for the measurement, of human well-being, so that progress and regress may be interpreted in ways that mainstream economic criteria neglect or fail to ascertain, both in theory and in practice. The importance of determining novel standards and indicators is considerable, and widely acknowledged by many academics and politicians (for example, the 2008–2009 Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission created by the French Government), but above all it is important to reconceptualise economic phenomena so as to re-orient them in line with life-based criteria.

First, it has already been highlighted that the type of ‘growth’ conceptualised and pursued in today’s global market has had systemic negative effects upon life at many levels, to the point of making possible the explanation of said implications by means of a cancer-based explanatory model. ‘Real capital’ as ‘life capital’ is both unseen and harmed by standard economic thought (CSC2013, p. 12).

Second, in the wake of the current economic crisis, the same global market has been proven equally unable to attain ‘growth’ on its own life-blind terms, that is, in terms of pecuniary aggrandisement for money investors and/or managers (cf. Crotty, 2000). ‘Real capital’ as sheer ‘money’ is not there either, especially if one considers that the vast meltdowns of the last few decades have been caused by speculative bubbles in exponentially ‘leveraged’ masses of currency without any ‘grounding’ in ‘a medium of exchange and capital’ such as ‘gold, labour, or livestock’ (CSC2013, p. 12).

The system’s inherent rationality, which economics textbooks presuppose, is to be seriously questioned, and that is what McMurtry’s work does, consistent with Castoriadis’ (2005a, p. 129) poignant characterisation of the Socratic role that philosophers are expected to play in genuinely democratic societies: the possibility and the ability to call established institutions and significations into question. Whether he will be listened to, we do not know. However, responding to a cancer diagnosis by avoiding what alone can work is fatal.

THE CANCER STAGE OF CAPITALISM (2): Second edition of McMurtry’s book updates cancer diagnosis | Giorgio Baruchello (2013) | CCPA Monitor

A review essay of the second, revised edition of John McMurtry, Understanding the Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Cancer to Cure (London: Pluto, 2013). Published in the November 2013 issue of the CCPA Monitor, Canada.

From Ontario to the United Nations: An Introduction to the Thought and Influence of John McMurtry, FRSC | Giorgio Baruchello

Born in Toronto in 1939, the third son of a prominent Canadian barrister, McMurtry was educated as tuition-free scholar-athlete at Upper Canada College (1951–57). He then read English (1957–61 BA) at Trinity College, University of Toronto, graduating with A standing while receiving the Clough Memorial Trophy (Outstanding Athlete Award) during his B.A. Subsequently, McMurtry starred as professional football player for Calgary Stampeders during his Master’s studies in philosophy (1961–62, MA awarded 1963), to which he brought his rare experiences as an elite athlete, developing thereafter philosophy of sport and competition qua areas of original research (e.g. McMurtry 1974 & 1983) and, more deeply, ground-breaking critiques of self-maximising games as a general model of rationality (e.g. economic and contract theory; cf. McMurtry, 1984b, 1997b, 2011 & 2012).

Zeitgeist’s mâitre à penser. An Introduction to John McMurtry. | Prof. Giorgio Baruchello | Z-Day 2020

The video starts with Svandís Ósk Gestsdóttir giving the Z-Day 2020 Intro, then Giorgio Baruchello spoke about Maître à penser.

Born in Genoa, Italy, Giorgio Baruchello is an Icelandic citizen and works as Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Akureyri, Iceland. He read philosophy in Genoa and Reykjavík, Iceland, and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Guelph, Canada. His publications encompass several different areas, especially social philosophy, theory of value, and intellectual history. Since 2005 he edits Nordicum-Mediterraneum: The Icelandic E-Journal of Nordic and Mediterranean Studies

Your Money or Your Life: John McMurtry and Martha Nussbaum on the For-profit Assault upon Life-capabilities | Giorgio Baruchello (2011)

Philosophical reflections by John McMurtry and Martha Nussbaum are presented in this article qua projections of the capabilities approach to life that has been developing in the humanities and social sciences over the past twenty-five years. In particular, it is shown how both McMurtry and Nussbaum reveal that human life is under attack not solely because of the eco-biological collapse denounced by the world’s scientific community at its highest levels, but also in many of those socially evolved civil commons that contribute to the flourishing of life’s capabilities and, in essence, make life worth living. What is more, a common causal root is found behind this ongoing two-pronged assault upon life capabilities, that is to say, the defining search for ever-increasing profits of the global free-market economy.

Good and Bad Capitalism: Re-thinking Value, Human Needs, and the Aims of Economic Activity | Giorgio Baruchello (2009)

The world is experiencing a twofold crisis. On the one hand, the global, virtualised economy is collapsing and, in its fall, it is bringing down significant sections of the real economy. On the other hand, the environmental collapse of the planet is also marching on, and there is no clear sign that this may stop soon, for the most commonly discussed paths for economic recovery seem to rely upon further spoliation of the Earth’s life support systems. In this book chapter, the reader is to encounter an account of this twofold crisis in light of the deeper axiological grounds that are causing it. To this end, the present author refers extensively to the theory of value developed by Canadian scholar John McMurtry, according to whom: “[F]inancial crises always follow from money-value delinked from real value, which has many names but no understanding of the principle at its deepest levels.”

Capitalism and Freedom: The Core of a Contradiction – An Essay on Cornelius Castoriadis and John McMurtry | By Giorgio Baruchello (2008)

0.0 Capitalism and freedom is not only the title of a 1962 book by Milton Friedman playing a pivotal role in asserting worldwide the neoliberal paradigm, but also the slogan that leading statesmen, politicians and opinion-makers have been heralding in recent years, in order to justify, amongst other things, the slashing of welfare states and the invasion of foreign countries…

Life Value and Social Justice

Introduction

Since its publication in 1971, John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice has defined the terrain of political philosophical debate concerning the principles, scope, and material implications of social justice. Social justice for Rawls concerns the principles that govern the operation of major social institutions. Major social institutions structure the lives of citizens by regulating access to the resources and opportunities that the formulation and realization of human projects require. Rawls’ theory of social justice regards major institutions as just when they distribute what he calls “primary goods” in a manner that he regards as egalitarian. Hence, the subsequent social justice debate has been shaped by and large as a debate about the meaning and implications of egalitarianism. While on the surface a debate about egalitarianism as a distributional principle seems to uncover the core problem of social justice — how much of what everyone should get as a matter of right — the entire history of the debate has been conducted in abstraction from what matters most to people’s lives. It is as a corrective to such abstractions that the life-value approach to social justice has been developed…