Background: Why nurses remain in the profession is a complex question. However, strong values can be grounds for their remaining, meaning nurses evaluate the qualitative worth of different desires and distinguish between senses of what is a good life. Research question: The overall aim is to explore and argue the relevance of strong evaluations for remaining in the nursing profession. Research design: This theoretical article based on a hermeneutical approach introduces the concept strong evaluations as described by the (...) Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor and provides examples of nurses’ experiences in everyday nursing care drawn from a Norwegian empirical study. Participants and research context: Data collected in the original study consisted of qualitative interviews and qualitative follow-up interviews with 13 nurses. The research context was the primary and secondary somatic and psychiatric health service, inside as well as outside institutions. Ethical consideration: The article uses data from an original empirical study approved by the Norwegian Social Science Data Services. Information was given and consent obtained from the participants. Findings: Remaining in the nursing profession can be understood as revolving around being a strong evaluator. This has been concretized in issues of being aware of different incidents in life and having capacities as a nurse. Discussion: Why nurses remain is discussed in relation to how nurses have shaped themselves by reflecting on what is of significance in their life. However, being a strong evaluator cannot be seen as the casual condition for remaining. Conclusion: Remaining in the nursing profession is obviously not a contingent matter, rather it is a matter concerned with the qualitative worth of different desires and values. Nurses’ awareness of a life choice impacts on whether they remain or not. Consequently, nurses may need to articulate and reflect on their priorities for remaining. (shrink)

For at least the past several decades, medicine has been embroiled in a crisis concerning the nature of its professionalism. The fundamental questions that drive this ongoing crisis are primarily three. First, what is the nature of medical professionalism? Second, who are medical professionals? Third, what does medicine or these professionals profess or promise? In this paper, the professionalism crisis vis-à-vis these questions is examined and analyzed chiefly in terms of both Francis Peabody’s and Edmund Pellegrino’s writings. Based on their (...) writings, I introduce a conceptual framework for professionalism to address the crisis. In addition, I contend that to address the professionalism crisis adequately, medicine’s position within an evolving health care network must also be considered. To that end, I first discuss the genesis of the crisis in terms of the Flexner Report and especially Peabody’s response to it. Next, I explore how the crisis intensified during the twentieth century, particularly in terms of medicine’s ultimate scientification and eventual commercialization, and how Pellegrino reacted to this. I then propose a health care professionalism cycle and a care-competence cycle to provide a conceptual framework for addressing the crisis. I conclude that medicine’s position is no longer as the center of health care but rather as another node within a wider evolving health care network. And the resolution of medicine’s professionalism crisis depends on medicine’s positioning and defining itself in terms of the professionalism for each of the other professions within the health care network. (shrink)

R S Downie; Professions and Professionalism, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 147–159, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-.

What is it to regard the occupation of teaching as a profession -- as distinct from a trade or vocation? The conventional modern conception of a profession is that of a normative enterprise in which standards of good practice are not just technically or contractually but also morally grounded: indeed, arguably the key difference between trades like plumbing or building and professions like medicine or law is that although the former are doubtless often subject to ethical regulation, ethical (...) principles are actually constitutive of professions. It is also plausible to regard universal professional obligations as grounded in rights indexed to considerations of human need: insofar as humans cannot in general flourish without health, medical practitioners are bound to respond to any medical need without favour or prejudice. This paper argues, however, that powerful and persuasive contemporary critiques of notions of objective or value-neutral development and flourishing raise quite serious theoretical problems (expressed here as antinomies) for any analogous view of teaching as a profession. (shrink)

Les vocations sont des chemins que la mémoire trace après-coup pour donner sens au parcours singulier qui nous mène de l'enfance à l'âge adulte. Aux lisières de l'adolescence, je me voyais chauffeur de train ou de taxi, même si je rêvais surtout de devenir journaliste. Je voulais écrire pour raconter ce que je voyais, pour rendre compte d'événements dont j'étais le témoin. L'essentiel était de prendre la route, d'explorer quelque chose qui n'avait été qu'entrevu ou d'en parler d'une manière originale. (...) La recherche en philosophie et l'enseignement de cette discipline devinrent mon métier. Sartre a raison de dire qu'on rate toujours sa vie, qu'on ne devient jamais celui ou celle qu'on aspirait à devenir. Les points d'arrivée ne sont pas forcément des points d'aboutissement. On croit achever quelque chose alors qu'on a creusé une brèche dans son devenir. Les crises, existentielles ou intellectuelles, peuvent avoir du bon. Elles réveillent le sens de la révolte, elles aiguisent l'envie d'un nouveau départ, elles invitent à d'autres commencements. Ce livre est le récit d'une tentative pour inaugurer dans ma quelque chose de neuf en la racontant. Un écrivain n'est pas quelqu'un qui vit de son écriture. Ce n'est qu'un nom, utile pour désigner celui qui ne sait pas ce qu'il est mais aspire seulement à exprimer quelque chose de lui-même"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The Profession of Ignorance provides a readable discussion in dialogue form of the philosophy of "ignorance" as practiced by Socrates, who claimed a kind of knowledge of ignorance as human wisdom. Martin McAvoy shows that understanding this profession of ignorance is essential to understanding the character of Plato's Socrates. He begins by explaining that to comprehend this concept, Socrates' repeated claim that he is ignorant must be believed. In claiming this ignorance, Socrates claims a kind of knowledge. This (...) knowledge of ignorance is the central paradox of Socrates' wisdom, generating his mission and elenchus. McAvoy presents the concept of thinking as a dialogue between knowledge and ignorance. In this dialogue, one asks as if ignorant, and one answers as if knowing. This very form questions the reality of knowledge. McAvoy questions the nature of knowledge, since it appears that one can not be sure exactly what is knowledge, but can recognize that it exists, though always ignorant of precisely what it is. He acknowledges and utilizes the presence of a double irony, that in an important sense, makes the profession of ignorance sincere. The use of the dialogue form reflects this double irony, and exhibits McAvoy's profession of ignorance as a claim to knowledge, just as in the case of Plato's. (shrink)

In her paper ‘Why Not Common Morality?’, Rosamond Rhodes argues (1) that medical ethics cannot and should not be derived from common morality and (2) that medical ethics should instead be conceptualised as professional ethics and the content left to the medical profession to develop and decide.1 I have considerable sympathy with the first claim and have myself argued along somewhat similar lines.2 I am, however, very sceptical about elements of the second claim and will briefly explain why (see (...) my 2011 paper in a somewhat obscure journal for a more in-depth argument3). The first part of Rhodes’s constructive argument is to show that practising medicine is not only a role, it is something more. Medicine is a profession and as such its members have to internalise and personally endorse a specific ethics. Rhodes is careful to state that more work is needed to complete the justification for this claim, but the arguments she does provide are strangely ahistorical. First, it is not that long ago that what we now conceive of as one profession was actually two very strictly separated professions, that is, university educated physicians and apprenticed surgeons. Can we really be certain that medicine is now one, unified profession1? Second the way butchers, bakers and candlestick makers are traduced is also oddly ahistorical. It is only fairly recently in many countries that anyone can butcher meat, bake bread or make candlesticks and legally sell the product to the public. Historically these trades have in Europe not been mere roles, but …. (shrink)

Ethics is no less of a science than any other. It has its roots in conflicts of interest between human beings, and in their conflicting urges to behave either selfishly or altruistically. Resolving such conflicts leads to the specification of rules of conduct, often expressed in terms of rights and duties. In the special case of professional ethics, the paramount rule of conduct is altruism in the service of a 'noble' cause, and this distinguishes true professions from other trades or (...) occupations. If professional ethics come into conflict with national laws, the professional today can test the legitimacy of such laws by reference to internationally agreed legal standards in the field of human rights, and so help to perform the role of 'professions as the conscience of society'. (shrink)

Canada, as one of the three Allied nations collaborating on atomic energy development during the Second World War, had an early start in applying its new knowledge and defining a new profession. Owing to postwar secrecy and distinct national aims for the field, nuclear engineering was shaped uniquely by the Canadian context. Alone among the postwar powers, Canadian exploration of atomic energy eschewed military applications; the occupation emerged within a governmental monopoly; the intellectual content of the discipline was influenced (...) by its early practitioners, administrators, scarce resources, and university niches; and a self-recognized profession coalesced later than did its American and British counterparts. This paper argues that the history of the emergence of Canadian nuclear engineers exemplifies unusually strong shaping of technical expertise by political and cultural context. (shrink)

For generations following the first American Medical Association Code of Ethics in 1847, the relationship between doctors and advertising remained unambiguous—advertising was forbidden. In 1975, however, the Federal Trade Commission accused the profession of “restraint of trade” and legally persuaded doctors to permit advertising amongst their clan. As the 1970s witnessed the relentless burgeoning of healthcare expenditure, physicians accepted the blame for immuring themselves from the natural forces of economics. American physicians were bullied to embrace advertising under the delusion (...) that doctoring—like any trade—would become better and cheaper if incited by competition. Today most American physicians engage in some form of paid advertising, yet it is doubtful that physician advertising has either augmented the quality or diminished the cost of health care. Advertisement has eroded medical professionalism by denying doctors the right to enforce ethical boundaries between themselves and the “let the buyer beware” world of business. And more is at stake than professional status, for the doctor/patient relationship, the cornerstone of medicine, is endangered as physicians continue to cast forth the self interested lure of advertisement.To assume that for over 130 years physicians anathematised advertising for purely ethical reasons would be naive. Sociologist Paul Starr explains that in the early 19th century, no group “embraced the ways of the market as actively as did popularisers, alternative healers, and quacks”.1 Advertisement was perhaps the most successful implement of empirical medicine. So it is no surprise that professional licensed doctors in America grew up with a “distaste and discomfort for advertising”.2 Medical advertisements were especially potent in the self reliant Jacksonian era, which touted health as a do it yourself venture commodified into tonics and one time procedures. To distinguish themselves from the circus of healthcare providers, physicians not only instituted higher educational standards and licensure …. (shrink)

Though this paper is mostly about a sense of “profession” common in much of the West, it explains how the term might apply in any country (especially how the profession of engineering differs from the function, discipline, and occupation of engineering). To do that, I have to explain the connection between “profession” (in my preferred sense) and another hard-to-translate term, “code of ethics” (in the sense it has in the expression “code of engineering ethics”). To understand engineering (...) (or any other occupation) as a profession is to adopt a certain conception of it, one neither old nor (yet) universal. With that conception in hand, it should be possible for social science to answer the question posed in the title. (shrink)

Analysing the profession of ministers in terms of sociologically and ethically funded profession ethics makes a mode of regulation and control in knowledge-based professional action - profession ethics - describable which is closely linked to trust. To adopt trust as an imperative of figuration however, it must be discussed ethically. A theoretical discourse of implementation in an institutional ethics perspective leads to alternative recommendations for figuration: Trust in the profession of ministers is no longer generated by (...) conscious intransparancy, by smothering up mistakes and fallacies and the concealment of control of ministers but by transparancy, feeling obliged to visions, having clear aims, common identity and cooperation structures between professionals and parishioners. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being tightly integrated into healthcare today. Even though AI is being utilized in healthcare, its application in clinical settings and health professions education is still controversial. The study described the perceptions of AI and its integration into health professions education and healthcare among health professions students. This descriptive phenomenological study analyzed the data from a purposive sample of 33 health professions students at a university in Kazakhstan using the thematic approach. Data collection was conducted from March (...) 30 to May 5, 2023, using an online questionnaire with four open-ended questions. Four significant themes describing the perceptions of the health professions students on AI and its integration into health profession education and healthcare was derived: enhanced interactive learning experiences, integrating artificial intelligence-powered diagnostic and decision-support tools into health professions education, AI technologies assist students in preparing for future roles in healthcare and integrating AI technologies presents several challenges. Health professions students perceived that integrating AI into health professions education and healthcare enhances their interactive learning experiences, increases knowledge and application of complicated medical topics, and prepares them for future healthcare roles. (shrink)

This article examines three common arguments for the claim that engineering is not a profession: 1) that engineering lacks an ideal internal to its practice; 2) that engineering’s ideal, whether internal or not, is merely technical; and 3) that engineering lacks the social arrangements characteristic of a true profession. All three arguments are shown to rely on one or another definition of profession, each of which is inadequate. An alternative to these definition is offered. It has at (...) least two advantages. On the one hand, it emphasizes the importance of professional community, the role of occupation in defining profession, the centrality of a moral ideal, and the necessity for morally binding standards (beyond ordinary morality). On the other hand, the alternative definition is in part independent both of moral theory and sociology. This article concludes by considering what light the alternative definition can throw on the professional status of engineers serving the Nazis. (shrink)

This second edition of _Professions in Ethical Focus_ comprises over seventy-five readings complemented by twenty case studies with corresponding discussion questions. These resources are organized into several thematic units, including “conflicts of interest,” “honesty, deception, and trust,” “privacy and confidentiality,” and “professionalism, diversity, and pluralism.” An alternative table of contents is also provided, identifying readings that bear on particular professions such as engineering, journalism, medicine, law, and policing. The book’s introductory unit offers short selections from classic and contemporary ethical theory, (...) including non-Western traditions. All of the readings have been introduced by the editors and carefully excerpted for relevance, always with the needs of student readers in mind. (shrink)

Every year in this country, some 10,000 college and university courses are taught in applied ethics. And many professional organizations now have their own codes of ethics. Yet social science has had little impact upon applied ethics. This book promises to change that trend by illustrating how social science can make a contribution to applied ethics. The text reports psychological studies relevant to applied ethics for many professionals, including accountants, college students and teachers, counselors, dentists, doctors, journalists, nurses, school teachers, (...) athletes, and veterinarians. Each chapter begins with the research base of the cognitive-developmental approach--especially linked to Kohlberg and Rest's Defining Issues Test. Finally, the book summarizes recent research on the following issues: * moral judgment scores within and between professions, * pre- and post-test evaluations of ethics education programs, * moral judgment and moral behavior, * models of professional ethicseducation, and * models for developing new assessment tools. Researchers in different professional fields investigate different questions, develop different research strategies, and report different findings. Typically researchers of one professional field are not aware of research in other fields. An important aim of the present book is to bring this diverse research together so that cross-fertilization can occur and ideas from one field can transfer to another. (shrink)

Vegetius' Epitoma rei militaris, in its discussion of Roman military recruitment in the Late Empire, provides a list of professions deemed unsuitable for military service. Among those groups associated with a lack of manly virtus are piscatores. This article aims to provide a rationale for Vegetius' ostensibly puzzling rejection of men involved in fishing activity by analyzing the antiquarian sources that colored his perception of Roman morality. The treatment of the piscatores thus reinforces the notion of Vegetius as a continuator (...) of reactionary discourse on traditional Roman mores, even though late antique attitudes towards masculinity were clearly changing. (shrink)

The mental health professions operate largely so as to objectify a language of mental deficit. In spite of their humane intentions, by constructing a reality of mental deficit the professions contribute to hierarchies of privilege, reduce natural interdependencies within the culture, and lend themselves to self-enfeeblement. This infirming of the culture is progressive, such that when common actions are translated into a professionalized language of mental deficit, and this language is disseminated, the culture comes to construct itself in these terms. (...) This leads to an enhanced dependency on the professions and these are forced, in turn, to invent additional terms of mental deficit. Thus, concepts of infirmity have spiraled across the century, and virtually all remaining patterns of action stand vulnerable to deficit translation. Required within the professions are new linguistic formulations that create a reality of relationships without evaluative fulcrum. (shrink)

That a homosexual -- man or woman -- is neither a sinner nor a sick person is the thesis of this paper by an authority on sexual deviation. Therefore, such a man or woman neither needs penance and pardon nor cure in the medical sense. Nevertheless such individuals sometimes need the help of doctors and must be treated with understanding. The medical profession also has, in the view of the behaviourist school of psychiatrists, of which Dr Bancroft is a (...) member, the duty of influencing social attitudes towards homosexuals. Obviously homosexuals who come into conflict with the law are special cases, and must be treated as such but this is not 'medical' treatment so much as social control even if drugs and other forms of therapy are used. (shrink)

This article presents an examination of the ethical code of nursing in Israel, focusing on the nurse-patient, nurse-colleague, and nurse-professional leadership relationships. This article offers for the first English translation of the Israel Nursing Association’s Code of Ethics to facilitate international scholarly discussion, and to critique this Code through the lens of Asa Kasher’s philosophical test, thereby examining its completeness and practical utility. As it stands today, the code lacks clarification of the professional ethical uniqueness of nursing. To address this (...) gap, the article adopts a philosophical approach using Kasher’s test named the Three Components of the Practical Ideal to distill the distinctive ethical obligations imposed on nursing professionals. The article highlights the importance of professionalism in nursing, encompassing expertise, autonomy, and recognition, as emphasized in the Code of Ethics. However, the current code does not explicitly delineate the unique requirements specific to nursing. Thus, the article proposes the integration of these explicit requirements into the Code of Ethics through collaborative efforts. Furthermore, it emphasizes the crucial role of nursing education and training programs in fostering professional identity formation based on the strengthening of the commitment to relevant ethical principles. The article contributes to the advancement of nursing ethics by providing a comprehensive framework for understanding and implementing proper ethical conduct within the nursing profession. (shrink)

Background Among the myriad voices advocating diverging ideas of what general practice ought to be, none seem to adequately capture its ethical core. There is a paucity of attempts to integrate moral theory with empirical accounts of the embodied moral knowledge of GPs in order to inform a general normative theory of good general practice. In this article, we present an empirically grounded model of the professional morality of GPs, and discuss its implications in relation to ethical theories to see (...) whether it might be sustainable as a general practice ethic. Methods We observed and interviewed sixteen GPs and GP residents working in health care centres in four Swedish regions between 2015–2017. In keeping with Straussian Grounded Theory, sampling was initially purposeful and later theoretically guided, and data generation, analysis and theoretical integration proceeded in parallel. The focal concept of this article was refined through multidimensional property supplementation. Results The voice of the profession is one of four concepts in our emerging theory that attempt to capture various motives that affect GPs’ everyday moral decisionmaking. It reflects how GPs appreciate the situation by passing three professional–moral judgments: Shall I see what is before me, or take a bird’s-eye view? Shall I intervene, or stay my hand? And do I need to speak up, or should I rather shut up? By thus framing the problem, the GP narrows down the range of considerations, allowing them to focus on its morally most pertinent aspects. This process is best understood as a way of heeding Løgstrup’s ethical demand. Refracted through the lens of the GP’s professional understanding of life, the ethical demand gives rise to specific moral imperatives that may stand in opposition to the express wishes of the other, social norms, or the GP’s self-interest. Conclusions The voice of the profession makes sense of how GPs frame problematic situations in moral terms. It is coherent enough to be sustainable as a general practice ethic, and might be helpful in explaining why ethical decisions that GPs intuitively understand as justified, but for which social support is lacking, can nevertheless be legitimate. (shrink)

In a market economy, members of professions—or at least those for whom their profession is a vocation—are vulnerable to a distinctive kind of objectionable exploitation, namely the exploitation of their vocational commitment. That they are vulnerable in this way arises out of central features both of professions and of a market economy. And, for certain professions—the care professions—this exploitation is particularly objectionable, since, for these professions, the exploitation at issue is not only exploitation of the professional’s vocational commitment but (...) also of her even more basic commitment to morality. (shrink)

In this article, the author speaks about how a profession can constitute a road to God and can lead one to a deeper understanding of spirituality as the heart of theology, by investigating the spiritual autobiographies of Teilhard de Chardin and Dag Hammarskjöld. While the former was a Jesuit with important contributions to the historical field, the latter was an important personality in the field of international diplomacy, whose contribution came to light towards the end of the important crises (...) that took place in the 1960s. Both of them left us rich spiritual autobiographies in the form of a last published book and a manuscript discovered after the author’s death and published posthumously.Contribution: This article brings into attention two important authors of the 20th century with different confessional backgrounds by investigating their spiritual autobiographies and showing how the profession they exercised led them to God and helped them deepen their spirituality and theology. (shrink)

This article re-examines the profession of the late antique mechanikos, who is identified as a practising architect with a sound liberal arts education as well as practical training. Despite the practical orientation of his profession, the mechanikos was of high social standing. This was possible because the practical utility of a vocation was increasingly acknowledged favourably in late antiquity and is reflected in early Byzantine portrayals of patrons, who allegedly invested hard labour in prestigious building campaigns and posed (...) as the supreme architects. (shrink)

L’avocat allemand semble jouir d’un statut plus valorisant au sein du système judiciaire allemand que son homologue français dans le sien. La formation commune avec les futurs magistrats, en l’absence d’une formation spécifique de type école de la magistrature ou école des avocats, contribue à une certaine affinité entre les deux professions et davantage de respect entre elles. L’Allemagne a intégré les avocats en entreprise dans la profession, notamment afin de les faire bénéficier de la caisse de retraite des (...) avocats, bien plus intéressante que le régime général. Les règles déontologiques qui leur sont applicables sont censées garantir leur indépendance et la confidentialité (moins absolue, il est vrai, qu’en France). Le système de rémunération par barème en fonction de la valeur de litige pourrait être un modèle pour une réforme de l’article 700 du code de procédure civile français bien plus ambitieuse et efficace que les idées du comité des États généraux de la justice à cet égard. (shrink)

As part of a survey of the biological history of Alpine populations, the lineages of all the families of the Vallouise valley (a French of the Hautes Alpes) have been reconstructed over several centuries. The genealogies have been included in a computerized population record, known as 20th centuries)Canadian programme Analypop. Most of the professions of the family heads were included in the files. In this study, various profession groups were identified and their descents determined over successive generations. In this (...) mountain area, where over 92% of marriages took place among relatives during the 19th century, the profession groups modulated their descents according to chosen strategies, sometimes with considerable differences among groups but with a remarkable consistency of behaviour. Moreover, there was weak interpenetration in the descents of each profession at both the 2nd and 3rd generations. (shrink)

The term value may be defined as a principle or ideal of intrinsic worth or desirability. Values and attitudes relate a property of an external object (intrinsic worth) with an internal process (feeling). People impute worth or value onto objects, principles or ideals. The values are preferences, criteria or choices of personal or group conduct. They are general principles that guide an individual's decisions. These principles have an inherent organization and a rational basis to impart worth to objects and other (...) individuals. As society and culture are not static, there can be many changes in a society in the course of a decade. Changes in societal values are usually gradual when viewed from a distance, and are at both individual and group levels. Individuals have values which they express both in terms of stated beliefs and actions. The present article is an attempt to understand the impact of profession, represented by teachers of higher education and medical doctors, and dietary habits, categorized as vegetarians and non–vegetarians, on the perception of existing values and expectation of ought to be values in the society. (shrink)

It might seem at this point that I am courting a contradiction: If antiprofessionalism is a form of professional behavior and if professional behavior covers the field , then how can I fault Bate for using antiprofessionalism to further a professional project? By collapsing the distinction between activity that is professionally motivated and activity motivated by a commitment to abstract and general values, have I not deprived myself of a basis for making judgments, since one form of activity would seem (...) to be no different from or better than any other? The answer is no, because the consequence of turning everything into professionalism is not to deny value but to redistribute it. One deconstructs an opposition not by reversing the hierarchy of its poles but by denying to either pole the independence that makes the opposition possible in the first place. If my argument that there can be no literary criticism or pedagogy that is not a form of professionalism, it is also that there can be no form of professionalism that is not an extension of some value or set of values. Whereas before one was asked to choose between professionalism and some category of pure value , the choice can now be seen as a choice between different versions of professionalism, each with its attendant values. To say that antiprofessionalism is a form of professional behavior is not to have closed the discussion but to have identified the basis on which it can continue by identifying the questions that should now be asked: What kind of professional behavior is antiprofessionalism? and What are its consequences? The answer is that, at least in its literary form, it urges impossible goals and therefore has the consequence of making people ashamed of what they are doing. The psychological distress that marks this profession, the fact that so many of its members exist in a shamefaced relationship with the machinery that enables their labors, is in part attributable, I think, to literary antiprofessionalism, which is, as a form of professional behavior, almost always damaging. Stanley Fish’s most recent work is “Wrong Again: A Reply to Ronald Dworking,” Texas Law Review . His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “With the Compliments of the Author: Reflections on Austin and Derrida”. (shrink)

A continuing series of scandals and tragedies is resulting in increasing public disquiet over the practice of the helping professions. In the author''s view, this disquiet is justified on both theoretical and practical grounds. Current practice is based on a natural-scientific, medical model. This introduces a bias analogous to the inquisitorial method in law, and results in misreading the nature of the problems of the people with whom the caring professions deal. The author proposes an existential approach based on moral (...) science in the Socratic tradition of elenchos — of conjoint personal enquiry. The general principles informing his stance are analogous to those of due process in law. He describes his method, which he calls social phenomenological analysis, and its theoretical basis, and illustrates it showing its application to the case of a fifteen year old boy, labelled delinquent, and his family. (shrink)

On the face of things, the concept of 'profession' does not appear philosophically problematic: just survey the dozen or so occupations everyone calls professions and list their common attributes. Typically, it is said that law, medicine, teaching and other..

This book contends that the crises of well-being, distress, and dysfunction currently afflicting the legal profession, other professions, and our politics can best be addressed by encouraging people to pursue a flourishing life of meaning and purpose in communities of excellence and virtue. It draws centrally upon the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, arguably the most famous living moral philosopher and notorious for his critique of liberal democracy, its capitalist, large-scale market economy, and hyper-individualism in late Modernity. Constructing a fishing (...) village called Piscopolis as a central image and theoretical ideal, the book integrates relevant aspects of MacIntyre's Thomistic-Aristotelianism into a clear, comprehensible, and original synthesis that also significantly expands and supplements MacIntyre's theoretical approach, including insights drawn from Heideggerian phenomenology. It examines the legal polis, the "fishing village of the law" called Juropolis, to illustrate how the Piscopolis ideal challenges members of the professions and suggests how the ideal might be deployed more broadly to organically transform the liberal democratic state into a "republic of virtue." With the Covid-19 pandemic starkly revealing the need for such transformation, the book will interest both the MacIntyrean expert and novice alike and appeal broadly to moral and political philosophers, ethicists, theologians, legal professionals, and scholarly lay readers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PROFESSING THE CREED AMONG THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS For Hans-Georg Gadamer FRANS JOZEF VAN BEECK, 8.J. Loyola University Chicago, Illinois The Creed, the Created Order, and the Religions T:HE CHRISTIAN CREED is a particular profession of aith, yet it is not Hie creed of a sect; it is essentially niversalist. Both are dear not only from the Creed's oontent but aJ,so fr.om. the act by which it is professed. (...) By means of the Creed, one particular, identifiable (" visible ") eommunity----the Christian Church-profosses, both to its own membership and to eviery pa,rt1cu1ar person or community 1that wants to listen, its faith :in God in the name of Jesus Christ. The part]cular profession is offered with a universa1ist intent, in the context of a communa:l missionary commitment to the whole world and, beyond that, in the perspectivie of the supernwbural, all-1 encompassing, escha:tologrcal "life of the world to come." It is not surprising, the1~efore, thait even those primitive trinitarian creeds that lack every trace of christoJogica.l narrative (and rthus also every ireferenoe rto Christ's coming to do justice to the living and the dead) still include a profession of at least a few eschatolog1erwl artides of belief at the end. The most nota.b1e among these features are il:he univiersaJ chm,ch (which represents and anticipates the finaJ gathering of the saints), rthe (definitive) forgivieness of sins, the resurrection of the flesh,,and rbhe life that fasts forever.1 But the Creed harbors another universraJism as well. It is 1 Cf. DS 1-6. 539 540 FRANS JOZEF VAN BEECK, S.J. natural, fuilldamentail, p:mtoilogiical. In!the text of the Creed, this univiersalism surfaces in the professwn of God,as Creato!l' of aJil,thait is, whether seen or unseen, and of Jesus Christ a:s God's 1agent in creation. In.addressing itself to humanity at ~arge, the Creed relies on this. It 'appeals to humanity's native eras-its native.attunement.to God am!d 1to the whole worLd, its limitless caipacity for ;authentic understanding, and its unquenchable thirsit for ioommunion. In the rhetoric of the Christian profiession of £aith, :the fO!l'IDer univiersalism enjoys pride of plare. The Creed's primary profession is positive: thematiicailly, the Creed is designed to formuilate the Christian £aiith in its mnc11ete, historic partioofarity, :in :i:ts commitment to the Christian mission to the whole worLd, and in its anticipation of :the eschaton. But if it is rtrue that the Creed primariily ·addresses itself to :ail:l of humanity with the es1chato1ogiterul message thrut is the horizon of the Christi,an faith, this positivie profoss,ion is undergirded by a commitment to humanity allld the wol'lld in their natu1~ail integrity, by means of ra "suhsidiairy universwlism." If, in the actualiity of its hisrboric e:~istence, the Coorch ·aiddresses itself to all of humanity :and the wor1d with its partrowlar message of sru1vati.on, it is only by virtue of.a fundam.entail, natural universalism thrut it can so aiddress them. And it is on the strength of this 1aitber univiersailism that the Christian community it·self, itoo, acknowledges an whl-iillclusive natura.l order which it shares with all. of humanity. " All of humanity " is no:t an 1abs:tmntion; it comes in the form of ithe greiat variety of "rull nations" (Mt ~8: 19), along with their great religions. The theologircail. 'bask of interpreting the Creed in light of ilts.commitment to £UDJdamentail universalism, therefo11e, must.somehow raise the issue of Christianiity ';s relationship with the world's great religions. ln taking on this issrue, we must remind ourselv;es of an important ooail:ity-one heavy with consequence, as will be1come ·dear in the oomse of this es1 say. This 11eality was not unknown to the first Christian apologists: the Consrtantinian THE CREED AND THE RELIGIONS 541 and Theodosian settlements of the fourth century slowly but surely, and ever more fo11cefolly, eased it ~nto abeyance. But it began to J.~eturn with a vengeance in the early eighteenth century, when the Enlightenment, iinereasingJy fascinated by the variety of religions and cultures in... (shrink)

The paper deals with the critical questioning of the relation between legitimate imposed legal obligations and the rights to refuse these obligations based on the right of the freedom of conscience, i.e. conscientious objection. The critical perspective that is applied to conduct the questioning is a legal profession because, in Croatian legal culture, there is no articulated answer to the question of how to reconcile these two obligations within the legal profession. The paper draws on the comprehension of (...) John Rawls’s theory of conscientious objection since it is a systematic analysis of justice that shall submit subjective understanding of the good to the principle of right. In practice, the focus is on the grounds for acknowledging conscientious objection among lawyers as well on the obstacles to exercising this right. (shrink)

What are the conceptual connections between torture and profession? Exploring this question requires exploring at least two others. Before we can work out the conceptual connections between profession and torture, we must have a suitable conception of both profession and torture. We seem to have several conceptions of each. So, I first identify several alternative conceptions of profession, explaining why one should be preferred over the others. Next, I do the same for torture; and then, I (...) argue that, given the preferred conception of torture and the preferred conception of profession, there can be no profession of torturers. In the final section, I argue that deliberately torturing or aiding in torture is always unprofessional. The fact that some conceptions of profession do not yield this conclusion tells us more about the inadequacy of those conceptions than about professions. (shrink)

This paper analyzes one dimension of the frequently alleged contradiction between treating medicine as a business and as a profession, namely the incompatibility between viewing the physician patient relationship in economic and moral terms. The paper explores the utilitarian foundations of economics and the deontological foundations of professional medical ethics as one source for the business/medicine conflict that influences beliefs about the proper understanding of the therapeutic relationship. It, then, focuses on the contrast and distinction between medicine as business (...) and profession by critically analyzing the classic economic view of the moral status of medicine articulated by Kenneth Arrow. The paper concludes with a discussion of some advantages associated with regarding medicine as a business. (shrink)

The following text is a voice in the discussion around normative problems of innovative therapies. It refers to problems related to the amendment to the Polish Act on the Professions of Physician and Dentist, particularly to therapeutic experiment category, also discussed in this issue in the article by Maria Gutowska-Ibbs: “Off-label - practical consequences of unclear legislation.”.

In terms of output in the form of published work and attraction of resources, bioethics seems to be a more vibrant field than environmental ethics. In this commentary it is argued that bioethics is, in some respect, less humanistic than environmental ethics and that two factors––bioethics’ strong connection to a profession, and its access to an intellectual ‘killer app’––offer ways in which environmental ethicists might learn from the ‘success story’ of bioethics.

This paper examines the professions as examples of “moral community” and explores how professional leaders possessed of moral intelligence can make a contribution to enhance the ethical fabric of their communities. The paper offers a model of ethical leadership in the professional business sector that will improve our understanding of how ethical behavior in the professions confers legitimacy and sustainability necessary to achieving the professions’ goals, and how a leadership approach to ethics can serve as an effective tool for the (...) dissemination of moral values in the organization. (shrink)