This collection of essays examines the specific ethical concerns related to traditional areas of political communication, including political culture, campaigns, media, advertising, ghostwriting, discourse, politicians, and new technologies. The contributors touch on such important issues as polls and computer technology, the ethical dimensions of political advocacy, and the ethics of teledemocracy, and conclude that the greatest threat to democracy is neglect of the public forum. The book advocates a return to civic culture based on communication and (...) persuasion, a high level of information, and active citizen participation. (shrink)

Working in the tradition of analytic philosophy, Alexander Brown argues in this book that many different forms of political communication that often infuriate the public can also be ethically or morally objectionable. These forms include question dodging, offering scripted answers, stonewalling, not listening, disseminating propaganda, making false promises, being insincere, making false denials, refusing to take responsibility, never apologising, boasting, and gaslighting. Brown bases his argument on host of reasons including those having to do with contempt, deception, interference in (...) autonomy, and violating the right to be heard. This is not to say that, all things considered, politicians should never engage in dubious political communication. Sometimes these are necessary evils. Brown argues, however, that further moral inquiry is needed to show why they are evils, and to determine when the use of these rhetorical tactics can be excessive, unreasonable, or out of place. Key Features: Identifies and conceptualizes forms of dubious political communication Develops an ethical evaluation of political communication Considers possible justifications for the use of dubious political communication Makes practical recommendations on how to regulate unethical political communication. (shrink)

The article considers the issues of modern German political philosophy in accordance with its formation, institutionalization and development. Germany’s political philosophy is analyzed in terms of its interaction with social and practical philosophy. The text states that political philoso- phy belongs to both social philosophy and political science. As a political theory, it is a compo- nent of social theories institutionalized in the modern era. As a political philosophy, it appears as a metatheory of political theory. Political philosophy is also (...) part of practical philosophy, exploring the problems of interaction between ethics and politics and the moral reclamation of the political system of modern society. These issues are themed in the context of the institution- alization of this discipline in the early twentieth century, its transformation into a political reli- gion during National Socialism, the revival after World War II, as well as actualization in such areas of socio-humanitarian sciences as discourse philosophy, functional-system theory of so- ciety, etc. according to the political situation of modern Germany. (shrink)

The concept of community is increasingly the focus of political argument in Britain, the United States and elsewhere around the world. The sense people have of belonging to coummunities provides a powerful motivation which continues to affecct the political and social face of the world. Recently, debate about the relationship between individuals and their communities has become central to the making of both, American and European social policy. In the United Kingdom this is especially apparent in the area of health (...) care, where ideas of community have informed recent legislation concerning community care, community health trusts and the Children Act among others. This volume explores the focus of interest in community and the emerging theoretical oppostion between communitarianism and liberalism, as well as the practical, theoretical and ethical issues relating to community in the health care professions, including a discussion of the health service as Civil Association, an analysis of liberal and communitarian views on the allocaiton of health care resources, an exploration of the use of genetic information and an examination of health care decision making for incapacitated elderly patients. (shrink)

Renowned in the disciplines of political theory and philosophy, Hannah Arendt’s searing critiques of modernity continue to resonate in other fields of thought decades after she wrote them. In _Communication Ethics in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt’s Rhetoric of Warning and Hope_, author Ronald C. Arnett offers a groundbreaking examination of fifteen of Arendt’s major scholarly works, considering the German writer’s contributions to the areas of rhetoric and communication ethics for the first time. Arnett focuses on Arendt’s use of the (...) phrase “dark times” to describe the mistakes of modernity, defined by Arendt as the post-Enlightenment social conditions, discourses, and processes ruled by principles of efficiency, progress, and individual autonomy. These principles, Arendt argues, have led humanity down a path of folly, banality, and hubris. Throughout his interpretive evaluation, Arnett illuminates the implications of Arendt’s persistent metaphor of “dark times” and engages the question, How might communication ethics counter the tenets of dark times and their consequences? A compelling study of Hannah Arendt’s most noteworthy works and their connections to the fields of rhetoric and communication ethics, _Communication Ethics in Dark Times_ provides an illuminating introduction for students and scholars of communication ethics and rhetoric, and a tool with which experts may discover new insights, connections, and applications to these fields. _Top Book Award_ for Philosophy of Communication Ethics by Communication Ethics Division of the National Communication Association, 2013. (shrink)

Previous papers on ethics consultation in medicine have taken a positivistic approach and lack critical scrutiny of the psychosocial, political, and moral contexts in which consultations occur. This paper discusses some of the contextual factors that require more careful research. We need to know more about what prompts and inhibits consultation, especially what factors effectively prevent house officers and nonphysicians from requesting consultation despite perceived moral conflict in cases. The attitudes and institutional power of attending medical staff seem (...) important, especially where innovative interventions raise ethical questions. Ethics consultants also need to address the thorny problems of the origin(s) of the consultant's authority, whistleblowing, conflicts of interest that affect the consultant, persistently poor communications in hospitals, systemic inequity in the availability or quality of services for some, and the standing of the consultant's recommendations, including their appearance in the patient's medical record. (shrink)

Analyzes ethical dimensions of contemporary political campaigning and governing.

Based on the concept of community, Kant's conception of religion may be connected, on my view, to the question of which mental attitude is suitable for the collective life of human society. It is possible to imagine a successful community, even if such a community does not exist in the empirical world, and to be oriented toward this ideal without ever being able to realize it. According to Kant, human moral self-understanding is developed by human reason, and this explains (...) the structural similarity between the secular republic and the Kingdom of God under the specific conditions of the enlightened consciousness of a person who thinks for herself. Thus the anthropological "fact": the self-understanding of the human being characterised by his faculty of reason. (shrink)

Democracy is emerging as the political system of choice throughout the world. Peoples now freed from the shackles of totalitarian systems seek to share the benefits made possible by democracy in its "home bases" in North America and Western Europe. Yet, paradoxically, in the last decade liberal democracy has been subjected to an onslaught of criticism from thinkers at its "home bases". Criticisms of democracy have been informed by scholarship in feminism, postmodernism and communitarianism as well as the revived interest (...) in applying ethics to public policy. These criticisms raise important questions about the traditional values - liberalism, neutrality or equality, autonomy, and human rights - thought to justify democracy. They also raise questions about the success of democratic systems in promoting alternative values and in protecting lifestyles not desired by majorities. This anthology contains essays by authors at the forefront of the controversy as well as by acute observers of the processes by which "democratic" public policy is formed. The essays include criticisms of democratic theory and practice, defences of liberalism (the set of values often thought to ground democracy), calls for major revisions of democratic institutions and practices, and recommendations for new ways of understanding our rights and responsibilities as members of democratic communities. Show More Show Less. (shrink)

Focusing on contemporary debates in moral and political theory, Situating the Self argues that a non-relative ethics, binding on us in virtue of out humanity, is still a philosophically viable project. This intersting new book should be read by all those concerned with the problems of critical theory, the analysis of modernity, and contemporary ethics, as well as students and professionals in philosophy, sociology and political science.

This collection of essays represents a sample of the work carried out on the various urgent issues arising from the contemporary "war in terror" by researchers in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Swansea University UK and/or who attended the 2005 conference on politics and ethics at the University of Southern Mississippi (Gulf Coast). Certain specific topics are obviously prompted by this general theme; others dealt with in this book are perhaps not as obviously connected to it (...) - though they are no less important for that. This book is therefore intended to cover some ground in both types of topic and it is to be hoped that its contents will stimulate further reflection and writing on the deep controversies that recent events in world politics have stoked. However misguided much of the debate has been, many have contended that the present era is witnessing a "clash of civilisations", in which fundamentally different value-systems confront each other with their mutually opposed and antagonistic views of the world. This position often undergirds a moral relativism, which denies that there are any universal values: all we have, according to this outlook, are the different values of different cultures seeking (insofar as they "clash") to impose themselves on others. In the first essay, James Beard counters this argument with a case for what he calls a "thin universalism", a relatively sparse but powerful set of fundamental values which can credibly be demonstrated to have universal application.Many who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq now oppose it, not on the grounds that they were wrong at the outset but that hindsight and subsequent events have given them new reasons to revise their judgements. This has led some to think that arguments about whether a war is just, and justified, can very often only be satisfactorily made "down the line", thus excusing initial support for a conflict which thereafter goes badly wrong. In her article, Christine Stender reminds us of many of the considerations that were available in 2003 itself which readily led to just-war arguments against launching the invasion at the time. It may be easy for the passage of time to cause us to forget those factors. But, given that we can only become more adept at making just-war judgements by reflecting on past experience, it is crucial not to let them disappear in the morass of subsequent experience. Arguably, the Abu Ghraib scandal did more than any other single event to undermine what moral credibility the American occupation of Iraq ever had. It certainly raised acute questions about the conception of "virtue" that the role of combatant in war ought to necessitate and, in his essay, J. Joseph Miller subjects this issue to close philosophical scrutiny, with particular focus on the ethics of torture. Traditional just war theory has been composed of two elements: jus ad bellum, which sets out moral criteria which may sanction the resort to war, and jus in bello, which provides moral rules for its actual conduct. Recent events, and in particular the tragically chaotic situation of post-invasion Iraq, have helped to make the case for a third element: jus post bellum, which deals with the rights and responsibilities of just combatants with respect to the pursuit of a just peace once conflict has ended. This remains an under-researched area and, in their article, Mark Evans and Christine Stender introduce a wide-ranging set of considerations towards the construction of an adequate account of jus post bellum. A concept that has surged to the fore in recent times has been that of a "failed state", which has been invoked as part of arguments for "humanitarian intervention." (Afghanistan is perhaps the most obvious and pertinent example.) It is, however, a highly contentious concept and many think it has nothing other than ideological, polemical value. Whilst admitting that it is prone to such (mis)use, Mark Evans argues, in his essay, that it can be given a determinate and useful normative content, even if it does not necessarily sanction the kind of foreign policies which certain Western leaders have thought it does. Most liberal democracies have responded to the "terror threat" by introducing emergency legislation, or by otherwise suspending in some way what they would "ordinarily" have regarded as inviolable basic liberties and legal safeguards. Nazeer Patel argues that this dangerously undercuts the moral authority that these states claim for themselves and urges that we rethink how liberal democracy should appropriately respond to terrorism; it may take courage not to "overreact" against it, but he plausibly suggests a more measured and morally preferable attitude for it to take. Finally, in her essay, Claire Delisle focuses on one of the more bitter conflicts within a liberal democracy of recent times which has, it seems, been resolved in favour of peaceful accommodation: that between the Nationalist and Unionist communities in the north of Ireland/Ulster. The full story of how this peace became possible has yet to be fully told, and she adds a vital element to the tale, of how incarcerated combatants developed attitudes, strategies and a culture which built the foundations for a process that eventually brought "The Troubles" to what, it is to be hoped, is a permanent end. With the exception of the editor's contributions, the research which is published here is the product of the intellectual labours of scholars who are in the early stages of their careers. This volume is, therefore, a compendium of work in progress and the authors hope that this publication will help to further their reflections; certainly, the issues with which they engage are a long way indeed from being exhausted in terms of the scholarly attention they demand. Obviously, their appearance together in the same volume should not be taken to imply that any of the contributors endorse anything of what any of the others argue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ethics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger DeltaMelissa BrowningEthics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta Nimi Wariboko Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010. 193 pp. $60.00In Ethics and Time: Ethos of Temporal Orientation in Politics and Religion of the Niger Delta, Nimi Wariboko offers a new definition of temporal orientation, arguing (...) that this new understanding of time can help us rethink social ethics, particularly economic ethics. He begins by citing literature showing that temporal orientation has always been used to speak about how a sociocultural group sees itself in light of a “time or origin” (such as a sacred past) or “time preference” (such as a preference for past, present, or future). Wariboko proposes a third way, redefining temporal orientation as a break or clearing in time between the past and the future—a kairos event. He goes on to say that understanding how members of a sociocultural group understand time is essential to understanding how they see themselves and their moral sources.Wariboko speaks of temporal orientation in terms of “time gaps,” contending that freedom and new beginnings are found within these gaps. Suggesting that these gaps are important to the process of defining subjectivity—since human beings live in a time-defined gap between birth and death—he coins the term “chronomethics” to refer to a new methodology where ethics is studied [End Page 213] through the lens of temporal orientation with attention to the analysis of cultural forms.Wariboko provides an exemplar of this methodology by doing an in-depth analysis of the Kalabari community of the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria. Through the use of ethnography, Wariboko explores politics, religious imagination, apocalypticism, and the philosophy of history in Kalabari beliefs and practices—setting African studies in dialogue with Western philosophy and theology. Here, and throughout the book, he draws heavily on the work of Hannah Arendt in his analysis.Although this ethnographic analysis makes an important contribution to ethical reflection, it is not without problems. Wariboko focuses almost exclusively on the chiefs of the Kalabari community, using both male language and male concepts. When Wariboko moves to a discussion of traditional Kalabari religion, he speaks mainly of the male or neuter aspect of God (which is called So, or so) and only briefly mentions the female aspect (Teme-órú). This leaves the reader to wonder whether the actors and agents Wariboko refers to include women. In sum, his descriptive analysis of Kalabari culture lacks a critique of patriarchy, which should be present in any analysis that seeks to make a contribution to Christian ethics.Perhaps the most significant contribution of the book is found in its chapter on imagination. Here Wariboko examines the ways in which the Kalabari people imagine their own society and construct a moral imagination. He pays significant attention to African conceptions of community and the ways in which individuals relate to their communities. Although Wariboko contributes an important original voice to this dialogue, this voice could be strengthened by incorporating the voices of other African philosophers and theologians rather than relying primarily on Western sources in his analysis of Kalabari culture.The book concludes by relating the newly proposed methodology (and to some extent the ethnography) to concrete applications within the realm of economic development. Here Wariboko focuses on the “kairos-ordering of society,” arguing that economic development will only be attained when the state maintains the rules of just conduct, nurtures kairos, develops human capabilities, embraces pluralism, and uses social practices to disperse knowledge. Although this final section is brief, it invites further reflection by delineating how temporal orientation could be used as a new methodology for Christian ethics. [End Page 214]Melissa BrowningLexington Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In this article I argue that Jürgen Habermas’ notion of morality (moral norms) has more in common with Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’ as a ‘ sittlich ’ relation – understood as a socially integrative force – rather than Kant’s supreme principle of personal morality. I show that Habermas and Hegel, each in his own way, make a distinction between morality and ethics. However, I make the case that Habermas’ conception of ‘morality’ incorporates aspects of Hegel’s notion of (...) ‘ethical life’, while Habermas’ conception of ‘ethical’ – referring to individual and group conceptions of the good life – is a remedy to the shortcomings in Hegel’s overly unified ethical life. I offer an alternative reading of Habermas’ principle of morality, which I suggest should be read as his attempt to provide a binding process to set up the norms that ought to condition a modern political community understood as a civil association. (shrink)

This book offers a radical reformulation of the pluralist position in 'English School' theory, providing an account of world politics that is normatively progressive and rooted in the significance of multiple community membership to human lives.

As the twentieth century draws to a close and the rush to globalization gathers momentum, political and economic considerations are crowding out vital ethical questions about the shape of our future. Now, Hans Kung, one of the world's preeminent Christian theologians, explores these issues in a visionary and cautionary look at the coming global society. How can the new world order of the twenty first century avoid the horrors of the twentieth? Will nations form a real community or continue (...) to aggressively pursue their own interests? Will the Machiavellian approaches of the past prevail over idealism and a more humanitarian politics? What role can religion play in a world increasingly dominated by transnational corporations? Kung tackles these and many other questions with the insight and moral authority that comes from a lifetime's devotion to the search for justice and human dignity. Arguing against both an amoral realpolitik and an immoral resurgence of laissez faire economics, Kung defines a comprehensive ethicfounded on the bedrock of mutual respect and humane treatment of all beingsthat would encompass the ecological, legal, technological, and social patterns that are reshaping civilization. If we are going to have a global economy, a global technology, a global media, Kung argues, we must also have a global ethic to which all nations, and peoples of the most varied backgrounds and beliefs, can commit themselves. "The world," he says, "is not going to be held together by the Internet." For anyone concerned about the world we are creating, A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics offers equal measures of informed analysis, compassionate foresight, and wise counsel. (shrink)

As the issue of food safety became one of the important public agenda, consumer concern for food safety became the general public concern. The Korea U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) completion allowing import of U.S. beef to Korea has turned into a massive public uproar and a series of demonstrations, revealing widespread concerns on the part of Korean producers and consumers about government food safety regulations and mishandling of the beef trade requirement. The mishandling of public concerns for BSE (...) on U.S. beef import by the administrators led to a breakdown of the relationship between the public and the government and a loss of consumer confidence in Korea’s food safety system. The KORUS FTA beef crisis raised the issues of government accountability and the importance of understanding moral and ethical aspects of food safety management that pose perceived risk for BSE by the Korean citizen. The aim of this paper is to address the importance of understanding consumer concerns, food ethics and of appropriate risk communication in dealing with politically and publically sensitive food safety issues. This is achieved by assessing the factors that contributed to the conflict between the Korean government and the Korean public over the KORUS FTA beef agreement. (shrink)

More than a purely philosophical problem, straddling the ambivalent terrain between necessity and impossibility, contingency seems to have become today the very horizon of our everyday life. Often used as a synonym for the precariousness of working conditions under neoliberalism, for the unknown threats posed by terrorism, or for the uncertain future of the planet itself, contingency needs to be calculated and controlled in the name of the protection of life. The overcoming of contingency is not only called upon to (...) justify questionable mechanisms of political control; it serves as a central legitimating factor for Enlightenment itself. In this volume, nine major philosophers and theorists address a range of questions around contingency and moral philosophy. How can we rethink contingency in its creative aspects, outside the dominant rhetoric of risk and dangerous exposure? What is the status of contingency-as the unnecessary and law-defying-in or for ethics? What would an alternative "ethics of contingency"-one that does not simply attempt to sublate it out of existence-look like? The volume tackles the problem contingency has always posed to both ethical theory and dialectics: that of difference itself, in the difficult mediation between the particular and the universal, same and other, the contingent singularity of the event and the necessary generality of the norms and laws. From deconstruction to feminism to ecological thought, some of today's most influential thinkers reshape many of the most debated concepts in moral philosophy: difference, agency, community, and life itself. Contributors: Étienne Balibar, Rosi Braidotti, Thomas Claviez, Drucilla Cornell, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Viola Marchi, Michael Naas, Cary Wolfe, Slavoj Žižek. (shrink)

Agriculture is changing around the world. The most dramatic of these changes, however, threaten the very ability of humanity to produce the food needed to sustain itself. Although more is now produced on less land and with less human effort, some farming methods deteriorate our resources to such an extent that the productive life of many important agricultural areas can be numbered, not in centuries, but in decades. Although all view this situation with alarm, few agree on practical solutions to (...) it. Social revisionists recommend stringent reform of those political and economic policies that allegedly created the crisis. At the opposite extreme, others adhere to the belief that economic forces, unfettered by unrealistic social and bureaucratic constraints, ought to be allowed to reshape agriculture in a manner most favorable to humanity's long-term well-being. Between these views is a wide range of stands on ethical issues in agricultural production and on the values of rural community life. Ethics and Agriculture is the first comprehensive anthology of multidisciplinary readings on the ethical questions confronting agriculture today. It sets these issues in context with an introduction to the ethical traditions that structure the discussion. (shrink)

Background Non-technical skills are cognitive and interpersonal skills underpinning technical proficiency. Ethical values and respect for human dignity make operating room nurses responsible for nursing decisions that are clinically and technically sound and morally appropriate. Aim To learn what ethical issues operating room nurses perceive as important regarding non-technical skills. Research design Qualitative individual in-depth interviews were conducted. The interviews were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s six phases for thematic analysis. Participants and research context Eleven experienced perioperative/operating room (...) nurses working in an operating unit at a Norwegian university hospital. Ethical considerations Approval was given by The Norwegian Social Science Data Service in care of the hospital’s Data Protection Officer. Findings Three main themes were found: respect and care for the patient, making the patient feel safe, and respect within the perioperative team. These features or themes, which incorporate collaboration and communication, are closely connected to patient safety. Discussion Defending the patient’s dignity is part of caring for and respecting the patient. The manner in which the operating room team collaborates is important for the patient to feel safe and secure. Poor teamwork may have dire consequences. Reciprocal respect within the team includes respect for each other’s tasks and responsibilities and to talk to one another in a friendly manner. Conclusion Being respectful and contributing to a caring atmosphere are central ethical skills in the operating room. To patients, harmonious teamwork translates into a feeling of safety and being cared for. The nurses see respect and patient safety, and respect and reciprocal politeness among the members of the perioperative team as central ethical non-technical skills. Lack of respect influences the team negatively and is detrimental for patient safety. Good communication is an important safety measure during surgery and creates a feeling of good ‘flow’ within the operating room team. (shrink)

David Lyons is one of the pre-eminent philosophers of law active in the United States. This volume comprises essays written over a period of twenty years in which Professor Lyons outlines his fundamental views about the nature of law and its relation to morality and justice. The underlying theme of the book is that a system of law has only a tenuous connection with morality and justice. Contrary to those legal theorists who maintain that no matter how bad the law (...) of a community might be, strict conformity to existing law automatically dispenses 'formal' justice, Professor Lyons contends that the law must earn the respect that it demands. Moreover, we cannot, as some would suggest, interpret law in a value-neutral manner. Rather courts should interpret statutes, judicial precedents, and constitutional provisions in terms of values that would justify those laws. In this way officials can promote the justifiability of what they do to people in the name of law, and can help the law live up to its moral pretensions. (shrink)

In this book Luigino Bruni analyses the market and its ethos, illuminating the history of capitalism and highlighting the need for a new ethical direction. In the last two centuries, the present vision of the market economy that can be called capitalism has produced remarkable economic, technological and civic results; but today, in these times of crisis, it has become obsolete, because it is about to exhaust its innovative and civilising force. The historical and theoretical analysis of this book (...) aims to show that a new ethos of market would come from a reconsideration of some of the ideas that were at the foundation of modern political and civil economy. The ideas of Adam Smith and Antonio Genovesi see markets as a vehicle for mutual advantage, public happiness and civic virtues; and it is these concepts that are necessary for a reconfiguring the market towards a great cooperative enterprise aimed directly at the mutual advantage of the subjects involved in the exchange and, indirectly, at the common good of society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 126.1 (2005) 138-142 [Access article in PDF] Kathy L. Gaca. The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reformin Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity. Hellenistic Culture and Society 40. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. xviii + 359 pp. Cloth, $60. As the current attention to same-sex marriage attests, religious communities and politicians today are concerned with sexual activity and rules, viewing (...) [End Page 138] them as correlated with particular kinds of social orders and values. Since second-wave feminism and Foucault, classicists and historians of early Christians have given considerable attention to how ancients themselves were concerned with sexual activity and its bearing on social, political, and religious life. Kathy Gaca's study contributes fresh insights about the saliency of religious ideology to understanding the different kinds of "sexual blueprints" produced by Greek philosophers, biblical authors and their interpreters, and early Christians. The Making of Fornication takes as its starting point a challenge to Foucault's argument for fundamental continuity in sexual morality between Greek and early Christian thought. Gaca argues instead that historically successful forms of Christianity are more discontinuous than continuous with Greek philosophy.Porneia exemplifies the break Gaca charts: "the Greek biblical sense of 'fornication' should not be confused with in the non-biblical Greek sense.... as 'fornication' requires biblical monotheism to be intelligible as a sexual rule, insofar as sexual intercourse and procreation are fornicating, and forbidden, by virtue of not being dedicated to the Lord alone. In the non-biblical Greek sense, however, means 'prostitution' and has nothing to do with worshipping God alone" (20). Sexual activity in non-biblical Greek understandings was nonetheless closely linked to piety, and philosophers crafted their moral sexual visions in accordance with their understandings of how sexual desires, practices, and reproduction relate to the gods and cosmic order. Gaca argues that the combination of Greek biblical ideas and non-biblical Greek associations of sex with the gods led to Christian "practices of intense sexual asceticism among converted Greeks and other gentiles.... Since alien gods such as Aphrodite remained so potent a presence in human sexuality, it seemed critical to put an end to exercising her sexual energy rather than to defy God" (304). She sees this ascetic trend differently expressed in the first-century writings of Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus and the second-century writings of the Christians Tatian and Clement of Alexandria.This three-part work unfolds as a study of different views about sexual activity, even as it builds a larger argument about "the motivating philosophical and religious principles behind Christian sexual asceticism" (9). In each part's chapters, Gaca charts the range of visions for how sexual activity does and should correlate with social order held by Greek philosophers (Part 1: Platonic, Stoic, and Pythagorean), biblical texts and their interpreters (Part 2: Septuagint, Paul of Tarsus, and Philo of Alexandria), and three second-century Christians (Part 3: Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, and Epiphanes).For Gaca, Tatian and Clement of Alexandria craft their respective Christian ideals in monogamous heteroerotic, reproductive terms adapted from biblical traditions as well as some aspects of Platonic and Pythagorean thought (notably an emphasis on the regulation of sexual desire and procreative ideal for sex, respectively); their two versions of sexual norms (Tatian rejecting all sexual activity, Clement conceding only non-libidinous procreative marital sex) should be understood as a response to the religious associations of sex and sexual desire [End Page 139] among gentiles, especially Greeks (303-304). Epiphanes represents a historically unsuccessful alternative trajectory for early Christian sexual norms, in its basic presuppositions (of egalitarianism as a norm for community which extends to a rejection of marriage), in its relationship to Greek philosophy (in continuity with many early Stoic ideals about egalitarian communalism), and in its interpretation of Paul (using Gal. 3:28 as an interpretive key over 1 Cor. 6:18).In Part 1 Gaca aims to correct for a lack of attention to early Stoic material among classicists and ancient historians... (shrink)

This work provides a mindset for leadership to deal with the problem of unethical transgressions in South African communities and buisness. It provides a thorough and comprehensive diagnosis of leadership and morality, from an analysis of causes, to the compilation of remedies.

This book contains diverse and critical reflections on Richard Rorty’s contributions to ethics, an aspect of his thought that has been relatively neglected. Together, they demonstrate that Rorty offers a compelling and coherent ethical vision. The book's chapters, grouped thematically, explore Rorty’s emphasis on the importance of moral imagination, social relations, language, and literature as instrumental for ethical self-transformation, as well as for strengthening what Rorty called "social hope," which entails constant work toward a more democratic, inclusive, (...) and cosmopolitan society and world. -/- Several contributors address the ethical implications of Rorty’s commitment to a vision of political liberalism without philosophical foundations. Others offer critical examinations of Rorty’s claim that our private or individual projects of self-creation can or should be held apart from our public goals of ameliorating social conditions and reducing cruelty and suffering. Some contributors explore hurdles that impede the practical applications of certain of Rorty's ideas. -/- The Ethics of Richard Rorty will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in American philosophy and ethics. (shrink)

In the Laws, Plato theorizes citizenship as simultaneously a political, ethical, and aesthetic practice. His reflection on citizenship finds its roots in a descriptive psychology of human experience, with sentience and, above all, volition seen as the primary targets of a lifelong training in the values of citizenship. In the city of Magnesia described in the Laws erôs for civic virtue is presented as a motivational resource not only within the reach of the 'ordinary' citizen, but also factored by (...) default into its educational system. Supporting a vision of 'perfect citizenship' based on an internalized obedience to the laws, and persuading the entire polity to consent willingly to it, requires an ideology that must be rhetorically all-inclusive. In this city 'ordinary' citizenship itself will be troped as a performative action: Magnesia's choral performances become a fundamental channel for shaping, feeling and communicating a strong sense of civic identity and unity. (shrink)

In this important and timely study, Frank Kirkpatrick draws on theology, political philosophy and the social sciences more generally to develop a Christian ethic of community.

This is the first book to outline a basic philosophy of ecology using the standard categories of academic philosophy: metaphysics, axiology, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy. The problems of global justice invariably involve ecological factors. Yet the science of ecology is itself imbued with philosophical questions. Therefore, studies in ecological justice, the sub-discipline of global justice that relates to the interaction of human and natural systems, should be preceded by the study of the philosophy of ecology. This book enables (...) the reader to access a philosophy of ecology and shows how this philosophy is inherently normative and provides tools for securing ecological justice. The moral philosophy of ecology directly addresses the root cause of ecological and environmental injustice: the violation of fundamental human rights caused by the inequitable distribution of the benefits and costs of industrialism. Philosophy of ecology thus has implications for human rights, pollution, poverty, unequal access to resources, sustainability, consumerism, land use, biodiversity, industrialization, energy policy, and other issues of social and global justice. This book offers an historical and interdisciplinary exegesis. The analysis is situated in the context of the Western intellectual tradition, and includes great thinkers in the history of ecological thinking in the West from the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.​ Keller asks the big questions and surveys answers with remarkable detail. Here is an insightful analysis of contemporary, classical, and ancient thought, alike in the ecological sciences, the humanities, and economics, the roots and fruits of our concepts of nature and of being in the world. Keller is unexcelled in bridging the is/ought gap, bridging nature and culture, and in celebrating the richness of life, its pattern, process, and creativity on our wonderland Earth. Holmes Rolston, III University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University Author of A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth Mentored by renowned ecologist Frank Golley and renowned philosopher Frederick Ferré, David Keller is well prepared to provide a deep history and a sweeping synthesis of the "idea of ecology"—including the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical aspects of that idea, as well as the scientific. J. Baird Callicott University Distinguished Research Professor, University of North Texas Author of Thinking Like a Planet: The Land Ethic and the Earth Ethic. (shrink)

South Africa in which we are living is characterised by unparalleled social and political change and apparently enormous differences of option. However, there is one aspect of our society that most of us would probably agree about and that is the decline of morality in our cities. Apart from the economic and political crisis, and the erosion of the core competence to actually get things done in the municipalities, South Africa is an ailing society with disturbing pathologies in terms of (...) indiscipline, violence, rape, assault, fraud and a failure to accept personal accountability for the high levels of crime, corruption, xenophobic attacks, gender-based violence and disintegration of families. The main aim of this study is to outline the profile of moral decay in the South African urban community and to define the calling of the Church towards moral regeneration. The conclusion arrived at is that there are definite signs of moral degeneration over a wide sphere of human endeavour in South African urban community, and that the church has a particular role to play as a driving agent for moral renewal.Contribution: Whilst there are many postive things brought by urbanisation in our cities, however, moral decay in our South African cities is one of the biggest threats to South Africa’s hard earned, freedom and democracy and merits closer attention. This study in ethics joins the voices of those people who are propagating moral regeneration in our times. (shrink)

“Gerçekten Öyle mi Olmuş?” kitabında, tarih disiplininin nasıl bir süreçten geçtiğine kısaca değinilerek küresel gelişmeler ışığında hangi yönlere evirildiği konu edildi. Çalışma, bir anlamda tarihin ve tarih eğitiminin varlık-amaç işlevlerinin belirlenmesinin temelinde yatan nedenleri, geçmiş-gelecek diyalektiği çerçevesinde sorgulamaya dayandı. Bu bağlamda geçmişin çağrışımının siyasetle ilişkisi, günümüz bilgi teknolojilerindeki değişim, dördüncü sanayi devrimiyle dönüşecek toplumsal yapının dinamikleri ve en nihayetinde toplumun geçmiş ve gelecek algısı ile bu algının post-truth (gerçek ötesi) dönemdeki yansımaları örneklerle ele alındı. Post-truth olarak adlandırılan bu yeni dönemde, (...) tarihçilik açısından problematik görünen üç ana konu incelendi. Bunlardan ilki, tarihin ve tarihçiliğin geleceğine ilişkin riskler ve tehditler. Diğeri, ilkiyle bağlantılı olarak tarihin öteden beri siyasiler tarafından bir meşruiyet aracı olarak kullanılıyor olmasının günümüzdeki durumu ve suistimaller. Son olarak da yeni medyada üretilen tarihsel bilginin gerçekliğinin denetlenememesiyle ortaya çıkan ve toplumsal kutuplaşmalara yol açan bilgi kirliliği. Böylelikle, post-truth çağında gerçeğin peşinden koşan tarihçilerin ve tarih severlerin, yeni medya ve onun uzantılarıyla nasıl yüz yüze kalacağı konusunda bir resim sunulmaya çalışıldı. Amacımız, bu üç soruna çözümler getirerek konu sonlandırmak olmayıp konunun özellikle akademisyenler tarafından tartışılmasını sağlayacak bir gündemin oluşturulmasıdır. (shrink)

In first chapters of this article MacIntyre?s view of ethics is analyzed, together with his critics of liberalism as philosophical and political theory, as well as dominant ideological conception. In last chapters MacIntyre?s view of the relation between politics and ethics is considered, along with the critical review of his theoretical positions. Macintyre?s conception is regarded on the one hand as very broad, because the entire morality is identified with ethical life, while on the other hand it is (...) regarded as too narrow since it excludes certain essential aspects of deliberation which refers to the sphere of individual rights, the relations between communities, as well as distribution of goods within the state. U prvim poglavljima ovog rada analizira se MacIntyreova shvatanje etike, zajedno sa njegovom kritikom liberalizma kao filozofske i politicke teorije i kao dominantne ideoloske koncepcije. U poslednjim poglavljima se razmatra MacIntyreovo shvatanje odnosa politike i etike, uz kriticki osvrt na njegova pojedina stanovista. MacIntyreovo se polaziste pokazuje s jedne strane kao veoma siroko, posto celokupni moralitet poistovecuje sa etickim zivotom, dok je, s druge strane, preusko posto iz politike iskljucuje pojedine bitne aspekte odlucivanja, koje se odnose na sferu individualnih prava, odnosa izmedju zajednica, kao i raspodele dobara u okviru drzave. (shrink)

This fascinating new book examines diversity in moral judgements, drawing on recent work in social, personality, and evolutionary psychology, reviewing the factors that influence the moral judgments people make. Why do reasonable people so often disagree when drawing distinctions between what is morally right and wrong? Even when individuals agree in their moral pronouncements, they may employ different standards, different comparative processes, or entirely disparate criteria in their judgments. Examining the sources of this variety, the author expertly (...) explores morality using ethics position theory, alongside other theoretical perspectives in moral psychology, and shows how it can relate to contemporary social issues from abortion to premarital sex to human rights. Also featuring a chapter on applied contexts, using the theory of ethics positions to gain insights into the moral choices and actions of individuals, groups, and organizations in educational, research, political, medical, and business settings, the book offers answers that apply across individuals, communities, and cultures. Investigating the relationship between people⁰́₉s personal moral philosophies and their ethical thoughts, emotions, and actions, this is fascinating reading for students and academics from psychology and philosophy and anyone interested in morality and ethics. (shrink)

While studies on contextual coitus verses interpretations have been explored by many scholars, there is a paucity of research addressing the theme holistically and spotlighting the aspects of moral ethics of its communication. To fill this lacuna, this study aims to analyse the communication ethics of coitus words in the Qur’an. Two main questions are discussed in this study. Firstly, what is the semantic meaning of coitus in the Qur’an? Secondly, why does the Qur’an employ certain terminologies (...) to convey the topic of coitus? This study applies a case study design to analyse the word ‘coitus’ in the verses of the Qur’an holistically. The results show that the Qur’an utilises 12 keywords related to coitus for the purpose of fostering the communication ethics of the Arab community at the time of revelation. Moreover, this study found that the Qur’an uses those specific keywords to respond to the sexual behaviour of pre-Islamic Arab community, narration of eroticism in other scriptures and gender inequality in sexuality. This study resolves that the words of ‘coitus’ in the Qur’an have implications for the emergence of Quranic communication ethics, which respects the aspects of comprehensiveness, politeness, analogy, aesthetics, intensity and gender equality. These six aspects form sexual communication ethics that are probed from a humanist perspective.Contribution: This article contends to unify the concept of theology and the principles of communication ethics. In particular, this study provides a theoretical contribution to the ethics of sexual communication that is sourced from the worldview of Qur’anic theology. Also, the methodology of this study can be a prototype of semantic analysis research that discusses certain topics and spot important keywords around that topic. (shrink)

In my recent book Liberalism with Excellence, I have expounded at length a conception of warranted self-respect. That conception, which draws heavily though far from uncritically on the scattered passages about self-respect in the writings of John Rawls, is central to my defense of a variety of liberalism that combines and transfigures certain aspects of Rawlsianism and perfectionism. However, it is also central to the positions taken in some earlier books of mine on capital punishment and torture. Although my understanding (...) of warranted self-respect was presented far more briefly or obliquely in each of those earlier books than in Liberalism with Excellence, it in fact underlies both my limited defense of the death penalty and my absolutist insistence that the use of interrogational torture is never morally permissible. The present paper will recount the gist of my conception of warranted self-respect and will then explain how that conception figures pivotally in my ruminations on the diverse matters of political morality that have been mentioned here. (shrink)

In this book, Kate Ward addresses the issue of inequality from the perspective of Christian virtue ethics. Her unique contribution is to argue that moral luck, our individual life circumstances, affects one's ability to pursue virtue. She argues that economic status functions as moral luck and impedes the ability of both the wealthy and the impoverished to pursue virtues such as prudence, justice, and temperance. The book presents social science evidence that inequality reduces empathy for others' suffering, and (...) increases violence, fear, and the desire to punish others. For the wealthy, inequality creates "hyperagency" - abundant freedom, power, and choice beyond that enjoyed by other members of society. For the poor, scarcity of time, money, and other important goods can also impair their ability to pursue virtue. Having established the theological harm caused by inequality, Ward then makes the argument that both individual Christians and Christian communities have obligations to address the impact of inequality. As individuals, Christians should pursue what Ward calls encounter, conversion, and contentment. Encounter means genuinely reaching out to the less fortunate and spending enough time to get to know individuals as human beings. For Ward, conversion means informing oneself about the realities of poverty and inequality. Contentment means being satisfied with one's position and not striving for more material wealth. Christian communities, in Ward's view, have obligations to pursue political action, tithing, and aid, and to foster encounters in parishes and educational settings. (shrink)

In three parts, this volume in the AP-LS series explores the phenomena of captivity and risk management, guided and informed by the theory, method, and policy of psychological jurisprudence. The authors present a controversial thesis that demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management are sustained by several interdependent "conditions of control." These conditions impose barriers to justice and set limits on citizenship for one and all. Situated at the nexus of political/social theory, mental health law and jurisprudential ethics, (...) the book examines and critiques constructs such as offenders and victims; self and society; therapeutic and restorative; health; harm; and community. So, too, are three "total confinement" case law data sets on which this analysis is based. The volume stands alone in its efforts to systematically "diagnose" the moral reasoning lodged within prevailing judicial opinions that sustain captivity and risk management practices impacting: (1) the rights of juveniles found competent to stand criminal trial, the mentally ill placed in long-term disciplinary isolation, and sex offenders subjected to civil detention and community re-entry monitoring; (2) the often unmet needs of victims; and (3) the demands of an ordered society. Carefully balancing sophisticated insights with concrete and cutting-edge applications, the book concludes with a series of provocative, yet practical, recommendations for future research and meaningful reform within institutional practice, programming, and policy. (shrink)

Ethical dilemmas and value conflicts affect cities globally, but urban leaders and citizens often avoid confronting them directly and instead view the governance of cities as primarily an administrative task or, even worse, a merely political one. Timothy Beatley challenges readers to consider the issues in our cities not simply as legal or economic problems but as moral ones, asking readers 'How can a city become more ethical?' Beatley unearths, exposes, and explores the many ethical questions (...) cities face today and touches on many topics, from privacy and crime to racism and the ethics of public space. Drawing from recent policy debates and using extensive examples to consider complex ethical dilemmas, Beatley argues that cities must expand the definition of the moral community to include all their citizens. Cities must take profound steps to address social injustice and plan for climate change-both moral obligations-and this approachable and readable introduction to moral philosophy, urban planning, and social justice will help new generations to grapple with these global issues. (shrink)

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)

This study examines the grammar of moral persuasion that leads to moral outlook transformation, exploring Cora Diamond’s insights in the ‘difficulty of reality’ (2008) and Wittgenstein’s concept of aspect change. Using J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Diamond illustrates the gulf between the character’s experiences and the audience’s interpretive deflections, highlighting the limitations of rational arguments in moral persuasion. Drawing on Wittgenstein, Diamond argues that we should imaginatively consider what seems nonsense as sense and understand the (...) speaker’s intention to communicate. By comparing how reasons work in ethics to Wittgenstein’s methods, this study emphasizes both the difficulty educators face in persuading students to notice aspects they are blind to and the responsibility of educators to acknowledge seemingly nonsensical sentences uttered in children’s voices. It underscores the role of imaginative engagement and educators’ responsibility to share children’s sensitivities to our shared world in ethical and pedagogical approaches to moral persuasion. (shrink)

Although it has become commonplace to regard Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis (completed in 1324) as a quintessential work of medieval Aristotelian political theory, this view has been challenged for various reasons in recent years. Some scholarship has pointed to the superficial quality of Marsiglio's appeal to Aristotle's �authority�. Others have emphasized Marsiglio's decisive reliance on sources and doctrines which were quite at odds with his overtly Aristotelian commitments. A revealing measure of the depth of his Aristotelianism is perhaps his (...) failure to cite Aristotle's authority at all in the Defensor Minor, an abbreviated version of the Defensor Pacis composed about 1340.4 At minimum, it seems necessary to reconsider the claim (pioneered already by Albertus Pighius in the sixteenth century) that Marsiglio was �homo magis aristotelicus quam christianus�.5 Indeed, it may be true to say that the assumption of Marsiglio's fidelity to Aristotle has acted as a filter, screening out interesting or original features of his thought because they are cloaked in outwardly Aristotelian language. In this paper, I would like to test this hypothesis with reference to Marsiglio's alleged application of the basic principles of Aristotelian moral psychology (in particular, Aristotle's doctrine of hexis) within the Defensor's account of the constituent parts of the political community. In both his Ethics and his Politics, Aristotle had employed the idea of hexis (often translated as �habit�, but more properly denoting �state� or �firm disposition�) to explain the way in which moral and civil virtues come to be instilled in persons. Thus, hexis served as the foundation for his conception of ethical and political education. Marsiglio seems to use the Latin rendering of hexis, habitus, in a very similar manner. He argues that the different parts of the community, ranging from the rulers and priests to the warriors and farmers, each have a set of characteristics unique to their function. These functional properties are, he says, a result of the differing kinds of habitus which typify each part of the community. (shrink)

This book argues that contractarianism is well suited as a political morality and explores the implications of deploying it in this way. It promises to revive contractarianism as a viable political theory, breaking it free from its Rawlsian moorings while taking seriously the long-standing objections to it. It's natural to think that the state owes things to its people: physical security, public health and sanitation services, and a functioning judiciary, for example. But is there a theory--a political morality--that can explain (...) why this is so and who the state's people are? This new contractarianism deploys a reversed state of nature thought experiment as the starting point of political theorizing. From this starting point it develops a political morality: a theory of the common ground of the role moralities attached to the various roles within the state. Contractarianism, so understood, can provide a basis for already popular ideas in political theory--such as political and legal liberalism--and overturn conventional wisdom, for example that the state is obligated to secure justice and that animals should have no legal standing. Contractarianism, Role Obligations, and Political Morality will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

The State You See uncovers a racial gap in the way the American government appears in people's lives. It makes it clear that public policy changes over the last fifty years have driven all Americans to distrust the government that they see in their lives, even though Americans of different races are not seeing the same kind of government. For white people, these policy changes have involved a rising number of generous benefits submerged within America's tax code, which taken together (...) cost the government more than Social Security and Medicare combined. Political attention focused on this has helped make welfare and taxes more visible representations of government for white Americans. As a result, white people are left with the misperception that government does nothing for them, apart from take their tax money to spend on welfare. Distrust of government is the result. For people of color, distrust is also rampant but for different reasons. Over the last fifty years, America has witnessed increasingly overbearing policing and swelling incarceration numbers. These changes have disproportionately impacted communities of color, helping to make the criminal legal system a unique visible manifestation of government in these communities. While distrust of government emerges in both cases, these different roots lead to different consequences. White people are mobilized into politics by their distrust, feeling that they must speak up in order to reclaim their misspent tax dollars. In contrast, people of color are pushed away from government due to a belief that engaging in American elections will yield the same kind of unresponsiveness and violence that comes from interactions with the police. The result is a perpetuation of the same kind of racial inequality that has always been present in American democracy. The State You See is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how the American government engages in subtle forms of discrimination and how it continues to uphold racial inequality in the present day. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.1 (2003) 73-75 [Access article in PDF] Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Sonia Kruks. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 200. $35.00 h.c. 0-8014-3387-8; $16.95 pbk. 0-8014-8417-0. Sonia Kruks' latest book, Retrieving Experience, is a valuable contribution to ongoing debates about the relevance of feminist philosophy in a period of relative political quietism. It also offers (...) timely reminders of historical continuities between phenomenological and postmodern conceptions of subjectivity and political engagement. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon, and the later Sartre, Kruks proposes to "explore women's embodied experiences" and to "ask whether they might not offer some means to help build affective bonds among women who are in many ways radically different from one another" (6). The book approaches this task by means of two secondary issues. First, should feminist thought be oriented by phenomenological or postmodernist theoretical strategies? Second, can women's embodied experience be the conceptual basis for political and epistemological practices that avoid the pitfalls of "identity politics" or an "epistemology of provenance"? The answer to both questions comes through the notion of praxis developed in Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. By thinking of embodiment as praxis or work, a strategy implicit in Beauvoir's idea that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Kruks seeks to resolve the ethical affront of finding one's individuality reduced to the "generality" of a collective—the ethical affront to which feminists of various generations and theoretical persuasions must respond.Retrieving Experience explores the significance of recognition as a political norm. Identifying Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew as a pivotal work in the history of identitarian theorizing, she situates recent appeals for race- and gender-based political mobilization in the United States with respect to the dialectical relationship between the Look, shame, and recognition existentialists observed in situations of anti-Semitic and colonial domination during and immediately after the Second World War. Legitimating knowledge gained under oppressive conditions formed an important element of African, Southeast Asian, and ultimately African-American and feminist resistance to cultural imperialism. However, Kruks warns, discourses of "recognition" risk placing the blame for group domination on individuals' face-to-face interactions while concealing the role of state and economic institutions in enabling social disdain to systematically damage a group's quality of life. Moreover, they suggest that the experience of subjugation alone justifies knowledge claims or counts, without further elaboration, as an act of political engagement. Kruks argues that knowers and actors need to identify conceptual and practical mediations enabling individual interactions, experiences, and strategies to prompt the recognition and transformation of [End Page 73] group situations. Sartre's notion of praxis, she suggests, explains how an individual can participate in a collectivity while acting autonomously or acquiescing to subjection.The most important passages in Retrieving Experience examine the affective aspects of the decision to take up a political identity or engage in political action. Going beyond Sartre's account of mediations, Kruks suggests that the sensory and emotional qualities of embodiment are themselves mediators, the products of praxis as well as its vehicles. Since any act of social knowledge involves the emotions, affect plays an important role in the process whereby individuals from different cultural, economic, and bodily situations learn about and shape one another's' environment through the act of knowledge. Individuals, then, may have a moral responsibility to learn about others in a way that gives them "sympathetic bodies." Drawing on Maria Lugones' social epistemology, Kruks argues that "world-traveling" or existing simultaneously in several communities or sets of power relations is a bodily act, but also a fully cultural, ethical act rather than a natural way of being. One is not born, but becomes, an embodied knower. Understanding female embodiment as a kind of work or "world-traveling" praxis enables feminist solidarity—"respectful recognition" to replace a historically implausible "sisterhood" or a distinct epistemological perspective as a regulative ideal for feminist politics.But how far can the... (shrink)

In the past twenty years Joseph Raz has consolidated his reputation as one of the most acute, inventive, and energetic scholars currently at work in analytic moral and political theory. This new collection of essays forms a representative selection of his most significant contributions to a number of important debates, including the extent of political duty and obligation, and the issue of self-determination. He also examines aspects of the common (and ancient) theme of the relations between law and morality. (...) This volume of essays, available in one volume for the first time, will be essential to legal philosophers and political theorists. (shrink)

This book introduces a study of ethics and values to develop a deeper understanding of markets, business, and economic life. Its distinctive feature is its thorough integration across personal and institutional perspectives; across applied ethics and political philosophy; and across philosophy, business, and economics. Part I studies markets, property rights, and law, and introduces normative theories with many applications. ¿Part II examines the purpose of corporations and their responsibilities. Parts III and IV analyze business and economic life through the ethics (...) and values of welfare and efficiency, liberty, rights, equality, desert, personal character, community, and the common good. This Second Edition maintains the strengths of the First Edition ¿ short, digestible chapters, and engaging writing that explain challenging ideas clearly. The material is user-friendly, with an emphasis on a strong theoretical core. Easily adaptable to the instructor¿s teaching, the chapters are separable and can be shaped to the interests of the instructor with suggested course outlines and flexible application to case studies. This text is designed both for coursework in Business Ethics as well as interdisciplinary programs in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law. This Second Edition: Expands presentation of eight normative theories, with increased emphasis on links between these theories and business and economic life Incorporates recent scholarship on shareholder / stakeholder debates about the purpose of corporations, bringing this important topic up to date Includes a new streamlined Preface/Introduction that provides a quick overview of the book before smoothly guiding the reader to the first chapter Uses updated examples and applications for today¿s readers Revamps a useful Appendix, including enhancing the popular primer on ethics Introduces a List of Further Readings at the end of each chapter and notable biographies throughout, directing students to the most promising literature for further research Includes a new ending chapter on the value of an ethical life. (shrink)

In 'Morality and politics in modern Europe', Oakeshott argues that two conflicting moralities underlie two opposed understandings of the office of government in modern Europe. On one hand is the morality of individuality, according to which the role of government is to frame and enforce rules of law that enable individuals to invent and pursue in peace their own diverse projects. On the other is the morality of collectivism, by which government is interpreted as the manager of a unified (...) enterprise whose function is to provide for the community, regarded as an organic whole that pursues a single project to which all other activities are subordinate. (shrink)

Full of practical information and procedural guidelines, backed up by useful codes of ethics and practice, this book covers the major responsibilities which both trainee and practising counsellors must be aware of before they take on clients. Examining issues fundamental to the process of counselling, Tim Bond covers such topics as confidentiality, the legal aspects of counselling, suicidal clients, record keeping and the importance of adequate supervision. He outlines the values and ethical principles inherent in counselling and points out (...) that the counsellor is at the centre of a series of responsibilities: to the client, to him//herself as a counsellor, to other counsellors and colleagues and to the wider community. A wi. (shrink)

This volume offers clear and forceful contemporary translations of the most important of Seneca's 'Moral Essays': On Anger, On Mercy, On the Private Life and the first four books of On Favours. They give an attractive, full picture of the social and moral outlook of an ancient Stoic thinker intimately involved in the governance of the Roman empire in the mid first century of the Christian era. A general introduction describes Seneca's life and career and explains the fundamental (...) ideas underlying the Stoic moral, social and political philosophy that informs the essays. Individual introductions, footnotes and biographical notes place the essays in their historical and philosophical contexts, and further assistance to students is provided by section headings in the translations which organize the principal transitions in the argument and the more unfamiliar aspects of Seneca's writing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel by Thomas A. LewisVincent LloydReligion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel THOMAS A. LEWIS Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 277 pp. $135Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel explicates Hegel’s account of religion and contends that Hegel offers important insights for contemporary conversations in religious studies. Specifically, Thomas Lewis argues in this book that Hegel’s thought enriches discussions regarding the relationship (...) between philosophy and religion, religious pluralism, the meaning of tradition, and the concept of religion itself.Lewis is careful and reasonable in his explication of Hegelian texts, cognizant of recent scholarship on Hegel in both English and German, but also attentive [End Page 226] to Hegel’s location in German political history and the history of ideas. The young Hegel, we learn, was primarily a social theorist and not a philosopher. Concerned with social fragmentation in the context of the late Holy Roman Empire, Hegel saw religion as a means to unify. He understood civil religion (not just philosophy or natural religion) as capable of engaging the imagination in a way that motivates people to act in line with reason and so to act morally. In Hegel’s mature thought, religion is integrated into his broader philosophical system; it is an entry point into the dialectical movement beyond immediacy. Yet Hegel continues to think that religion inculcates crucial intuitions about what matters most to us as we live together. While some philosophers have recently emphasized Hegel’s deep debt to Kant, others hold that Hegel’s account of religion demonstrates his distance from Kant. For Lewis, Hegel’s account of religion, as the entwined beliefs and practices representing a community’s sensibilities, demonstrates his close relation to Kant and his continuing struggle to bring together sensibility and understanding, worldly objects, and human thoughts.Lewis occasionally ventures beyond the explication of Hegel, although these forays sometimes feel brief and thin. Like Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jeffrey Stout, Lewis presents Hegel’s view of religion as essentially mixing—or synthesizing—history, narrative, community, and identity. Lewis understands Stout to be in agreement with Hegel, extending Hegel’s account of religious tradition to include the broader array of traditions that we encounter in the contemporary world. He suggests that Hauerwas could learn to better appreciate religion’s conceptual aspect from Hegel. Hegel and MacIntyre share what might seem to be a Christian triumphalism, but Lewis reads this more sympathetically as a self-awareness that rejects relativism. They both argue that (certain versions of) Christianity can account for the insights of other worldviews and can address contradictions in those other worldviews. But MacIntyre requires that such judgments be based on deep knowledge of two traditions in a comparison; Hegel paints non-Protestant traditions with very broad strokes. Indeed, this is the point where Lewis himself is the most critical of Hegel. He charges that Hegel’s attempt to survey all major world religions (in his account of “determinate religion”) is overly ambitious, and he argues that Hegel would be more successful had he detached this survey from his argument for Christianity’s status as the “consummate religion.” Hegel’s conception of consummate religion should be understood more broadly, Lewis argues, to include nonreligious beliefs and practices, such as civic education, that reflect the spirit of a community.Lewis claims that Hegel complicates the supposed Protestant bias of religious studies scholarship with its focus on belief at the expense of practice. Although unequivocally Protestant, Hegel’s approach to religion emphasizes the inextricability of practice and belief. But what was Hegel’s approach? Was it an [End Page 227] alternative Protestant tradition? Was it a theological movement or simply a philosophical one? Further, it is unclear whether Lewis’s Hegel would find any use for religious ethics other than as an idiom for ethical reflection suited to those who are not capable of advancing to philosophical heights.Vincent LloydSyracuse UniversityCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology by Joshua HordernMichael P. JaycoxPolitical Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology By Joshua Hordern NEW YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013. 312 PP. $125.00Hordern asks his reader to consider that the decline of participatory democracy in Western societies may be ameliorated by a renewed appreciation of the role of emotions in politics. Creatively retrieving many elements of the Augustinian (...) tradition, he argues that the “evaluative intentionality” of emotions is an imperfect type of moral insight whereby human beings both participate in and conform themselves to the created “order of value” (40, 77). Although the power of sin profoundly destabilizes human inclinations, emotions can become stable moral guides through a process of “intersubjective verification” (81). Hordern claims that the epistemological capacities of socially stabilized emotions are substantial enough to enable the community to “participate in and evaluate the goods with which institutional practices are concerned, recognize the authority of those who promote the proper ends of those goods, and initiate common political reflection and deliberation” (142).Bringing these insights to bear upon his own political context, Hordern claims the “resentment,” “alienation,” and “disillusionment” that some British citizens feel toward the cosmopolitan project of the European Union stands as [End Page 213] evidence that “law which is not primarily rooted in the locality which it governs will run the risk of opposing the affections of the people” (22, 23, 242). Working from the premise that “local loves are the fertile soil in which more wide-ranging loves may grow,” Hordern champions “the politically beneficial possibilities of a limited ethnocentricity,” by which he means that emotions shared in smaller communities and within nation-states motivate citizens to attend to the common good most effectively (224, 240).Anticipating the objections to this proposal, Hordern assures his reader that the influence of Christianity upon democratic processes minimizes the negative effects of ethnocentric nationalism, such as the oppression of socially vulnerable groups. Insofar as Christian emotions participate uniquely in the transcendent order of values, the participation of this community in the temporal order would “disturb, renew, or correct patterns of social trust” (271) and provide “a critical standpoint whereby affections in all institutions may be described and assessed” (164).This reviewer shares some of Hordern’s general premises regarding the intelligence of emotions and their motivational potential in public life. By way of evaluation, however, I find three significant problems with his argument. First, although Hordern grasps Martha Nussbaum’s emotion theory quite well, he habitually mischaracterizes the more central aspects of her moral thought in order to prop up his somewhat more conservative agenda. For example, he accuses her of denying the existence of a “stable moral order” and of endorsing an individualistic concept of agency (98). These inferences fail to account for the highly social and essentialist vision of human flourishing that provides the normative content of her capability theory and her feminist ethic.Second, he offers some weak arguments as he develops his account of emotional stabilization. For example, he alleges that virtue cannot stabilize emotion because it is a form of “epistemological self-dependence” that “tends to block repentant attentiveness,” but this assertion is grounded in his antecedent concern to discredit Aristotelian habituation as a moral theory (110, 101). As he develops his own alternative proposal about intersubjective verification by appeals to “the power of memory,” he glosses over significant counterarguments concerning the “contested” nature of social memories of historical events (110, 115).Third, Hordern does not propose any universal norms of justice capable of checking the authority of particular civil governments. For example, he seems dismissive about the moral dangers of emotionally motivated nationalism, the gravity of which he attempts to minimize by emphasizing the critical aspect of Christian political participation. (The historical record of fascism in Europe would hardly support such a claim.) Nevertheless, he presumes a tacit normative point of reference every time he offers a political judgment. For example, he claims that civil authority should caution “against overreaching [End Page 214] itself in pride,” but this is to beg the question of what the interventionist role of governments should be vis-à-vis systemic injustice (198).Political... (shrink)