Brings together the key writings of Ferdinand Christian Baur across theology, biblical studies, early Christian history, and philosophy, showing his crucial role in the development of 19th-century thought.

Brecht, A. The incompatibility of liberty and equality.--Possony, S. T. The procedural constitution.--Pelinka, A. Der unechte Parlamentarismus in Frankreich und Österreich.--Schambeck, H. Die Stellung der politischen Parteien nach österreichischem Verfassungsrecht.--Dunner, J. Democratic theory and civil disobedience.--Schäfer, F. Die Ausschussberatung im Deutschen Bundestag.--Willms, G. Miszellen aus der Gefangenschaft.--Kaase, M. Strukturen politischer Beteiligung.--Merkl, P. H. Party members and society in West Germany and Italy.--Kaltefleiter, W. Politische Form.--Zellentin, G. Konferenzdiplomatie und friedlicher Wandel in Europa.--Kammler, H. Kapitalistische Expansion und Exportmonopolismus.--Wildenmann, R. Wahlsysteme und Demokratie.

The aim of compiling the various essays presented here is to make readily accessible many of the most significant and influential discussions of privacy to be found in the literature. In addition to being representative of the diversity of attitudes toward privacy, this collection has a coherence that results from the authors' focus on the same issues and theories. The main issue addressed in this book is the moral significance of privacy. Some social science and legal treatments are included because (...) of their direct bearing on the moral issues that privacy raises. In addition to the classics on privacy, the author has included an interpretative essay on the privacy literature, which provides a philosophical guideline as to what the issues are and how various thinkers have contributed to their resolution. (shrink)

This book attacks the assumption found in moral philosophy that social control as such is an intellectually and morally destructive force. It replaces this view with a richer and deeper perspective on the nature of social character aimed at showing how social freedom cannot mean immunity from social pressure. The author demonstrates how our competence as rational and social agents depends on a constructive adaptation of social control mechanisms. Our facility at achieving our goals is enhanced, rather than undermined, by (...) social control. The author then articulates sources, contracts, and degrees of legitimate social control in different social and historical settings. Drawing on a wide range of material in moral and political philosophy, law, cognitive and social psychology, anthropology and literature, Professor Schoeman shows how the aim of moral philosophy ought to be to understand our social character, not to establish fortifications against it in the name of rationality and autonomy. (shrink)

This volume of original essays addresses a range of issues concerning the responsibility individuals have for their actions and for their characters. Among the central questions considered are the following: What scope is there for regarding a person as responsible for his or her character given genetic and environmental factors? Does an account of responsibility provide a legitimate basis for the retributive emotions? Are we ever justified in feeling guilty for occurences over which we have no control? Does responsibility for (...) the consequences of our acts require that they were intended or simply expected? How have a number of influential previous philosophers, including Aristotle, Maimonides, and Spinoza, approached these questions? (shrink)

Tout commentateur ne dit-il pas les choses autrement que l'auteur qu'il explique ? Sans cela, il devrait se borner à renvoyer au texte, et n'y rien ajouter. Mais nous ne rejoignons pas, en cela, ceux des critiques contemporains qui cherchent la signification profonde d'une doctrine en des idées auxquelles l'auteur n'a jamais pensé. S'il est vrai que Descartes n'a pas séparé, en son vocabulaire, ce que nous appelons être et ce que nous appelons objet, il demeure que, par sa théorie (...) de la création des vérités, par son doute, par son projet de fonder la science sur la métaphysique, il les a distingués, et a pris, de leur rapport, la conscience la plus claire. En traduisant parfois les pensées cartésiennes en un langage plus adapté à notre temps, en déclarant que Descartes a découvert métaphysiquement l'homme comme pouvoir de dépasser l'objet vers l'Etre, et comme signe de l'Être en ce monde, nous n'avons pas voulu moderniser Descartes, mais seulement dégager ce qui, dans sa philosophie, est éternel. (shrink)

Preface--I. The definition of pragmatism and humanism--II. From Plato to Protagoras.--III. The relations of logic and psychology.--IV. Truth and Mr. Bradley.--V. The ambiguity of truth.--VI. The nature of truth.--VII. The making of truth.--VIII. Absolute truth and absolute reality.--XI. Empiricism and the absolute.--X. Is absolute idealism solipsistic? XI. Absolutism and the dissociation of personality.--XII. Absolutism and religion.--XIII. The papyri of Philonous, I-II.--XIV. I. Protogoras the humanist.--XV. II A dialogue concerning gods and priests.--XVI. Faith, reason, and religion.--XVII. The progress of psychical research.--XVIII. (...) Freedom.--XIX. The making of reality.--XX. Dreams and idealism.-- Index. (shrink)

L. Jonathan Cohen has written a number of important books and articles in which he argues that mathematical probability provides a poor model of much of what paradigmatically passes for sound reasoning, whether this be in the sciences, in common discourse, or in the law. In his book, The Probable and the Provable, Cohen elaborates six paradoxes faced by advocates of mathematical probability (PM) when treating issues of evidence as they would arise in a court of law. He argues that (...) his system of inductive probability (PI) satisfactorily handles the issues that proved paradoxical for mathematical probability, and consequently PI deserves to be thought of as an important standard of rational thinking. I argue that a careful look at each of the alleged paradoxes shows that there is no conflict between mathematical probability and the law, except when for reasons of policy we opt for values in addition to accuracy maximization. Recognizing the role of such policies provides no basis for questioning the adequacy of PM. The significance of this critical treatment of Cohen's work is that those interested in revising the laws of evidence to allow for more explicitly mathematical approaches ought to feel that such revisions will not violate the spirit of forensic rationality. (shrink)

Meaningful work is both a moral issue and an economic one. Studies show that workers’ experience of meaninglessness in their jobs contributes to job dissatisfaction which has negative effects to business. If having a meaningful work is essential for the well-being of workers, providing them with one is an ethical requirement for business establishments. The essay aims to articulate an account of meaningful work in the Catholic social teachings. CST rejects the subjectivist and relativist notion of work which affirms the (...) absolute freedom of individuals to choose their commitment and goals, even if this includes experiencing satisfaction in dehumanizing work. First, the paper will present a summary account of some of the current views on meaningful work from the objective-normative approach. This will be followed by a systematic treatment of the meaning and value of work in the CST, the similarities and differences it has with alternative views, and its implications for the way we promote meaningful work. The paper will argue that by recognizing the subjective and objective dimensions of work and affirming that although the two are inseparable, the former takes priority over the latter; CST develops a holistic, comprehensive, and coherent account of meaningful work which overcomes some of the difficulties that are usually encountered in dealing with this issue from a purely objective approach. (shrink)

Realist evaluation has gained prominence in the field of evaluation in recent years. Its theory-driven approach to explaining how and why programmes work or not makes it attractive to many novices, early career researchers, and organizations implementing various programmes globally and relevant to policymakers and programme implementers. While realist evaluation seeks to be pragmatic, adopting principles and methods that can be used to help focus an evaluation, its deep ontological and epistemological foundations make its application in real-life situations challenging. In (...) this paper, we seek to unpack the key tenets scaffolding the practical application of realist evaluation. Although Pawson and Tilley foreground realist evaluation in applied scientific realism, we argue that an amalgam of scientific and critical realist principles underpins realist evaluation. We unpack these principles and illustrate how they fit into each other to provide a cogent theoretical foundation for realist evaluation. (shrink)

This paper argues that liberal tenats that justify intervention to promote the welfare of an incompetent do not suffice as a basis for analyzing parent-child relationships, and that this inadequacy is the basis for many of the problems that arise when thinking about the state's role in resolving family conflicts, particularly when monitoring parental discretion in medical decision-making on behalf of a child. The state may be limited by the best interest criterion when dealing with children, but parents are not. (...) The state's relation with the child is formal while the parental relation is intimate, having its own goals and purposes. While the liberal canons insist on the incompetent one's best interest, parents are permitted to compromise the child's interests for ends related to these familial goals and purposes. Parents decisions should be supervened, in general, only if it can be shown that no responsible mode of thinking warrants such treatment of a child. Keywords: proxy medical consent, children's rights, state's protection of children, parental authority and the state's intervention, paternalism, liberalism, parental values CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This study adds to the existing literature on meaningful work by offering a cross-cultural perspective. Since work shapes the kind of person that we are and plays an important role in our well-being, some theorists have adopted a virtue theory approach to meaningful work using an Aristotelian-MacIntyrean framework. For lack of a better term, I will call this a western virtue theory. This paper presents a contemporary virtue-focused Buddhist perspective on the topic. While a virtue-ethics interpretation of Buddhism is now (...) widely accepted and has been applied to several issues, not much has been written about meaningful work using a Buddhist-Aristotelian comparative framework. Buddhism is an important cultural component not only of countries that are predominantly Buddhist, but of other societies that have come in contact with it. To develop a Buddhist framework, I draw heavily from the works of Buddhist scholars, particularly in the West who use a virtue framework in interpreting Buddhism. The aims of my essay are dual. The first is to articulate a straightforward application of Buddhism on the contemporary ethical discussion of meaningful work. The second is to discuss the similarities, clarify the differences, and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses relative to each other of the Buddhist and the Western virtue theory perspectives. In my analysis, I argue that consideration of Buddhist perspective will enable us to construct a cross-cultural, inclusive, and pluralistic conceptual model for the deliberation of meaningful work that complements the Western virtue theory. (shrink)

This paper draws on the economics of ethical compliance model to examine the association between ethical reasoning, perceived risk of detection, perceived levels of penalties and Chinese auditors'' ethical behavior in an audit conflict situation. Using 53 Chinese auditors from Shenzen as subjects, and a survey questionnaire, this study found that there is a significant negative association between ethical reasoning and the likelihood of unethical behavior and that this negative association is weaker for auditors who perceive higher risks of detection.

Im Rahmen der Tönnies-Gesamtausgabe nimmt der Band 2 eine Sonderstellung ein. Er gehört ausschließlich dem bis auf heute wirkungsreichen Hauptwerk „Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft", zuerst erschienen 1887. Mit dieser Schrift begründet Ferdinand Tönnies die Soziologie erstmals als eigenständige deutsche Wissenschaft. Als „Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie" entfaltet er darin die Gegensätzlichkeit von Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft und erklärt das Auseinandertreten beider Formen des Soziallebens mit einer elaborierten Willenstheorie. Die kritische Edition dieses vielfach publizierten Klassikers der Soziologie dokumentiert erstmals alle einschlägigen Textzeugen vom (...) ersten handschriftlichen Konzept von 1880 bis hin zur Ausgabe letzter Hand von 1935. Besonders eindringlich spiegelt sich die wechselvolle Werkgeschichte in den stets neu verfassten Einleitungen, die Tönnies den acht Auflagen zwischen 1887 und 1935 voranstellt und die als gewichtige Werkbestandteile zusammen mit ihrem frühesten Entwurf und den zurückgehaltenen späteren Fassungen vollständig wiedergegeben werden. Im Zentrum der Edition steht der auf Basis der Handschrift erstmals kritisch annotierte und mit umfassendem Variantenapparat versehene Text der Ausgabe letzter Hand. (shrink)

We obtain rich measures of the risk preferences of a sample of Vietnamese farmers, and revisit the link between risk preferences and economic well-being. Far from being particularly risk averse, our farmers are on average risk neutral and, thus, more risk tolerant than typical Western subject populations. This generalises recent findings indicating that students in poorer countries are more risk tolerant than students in richer countries to a general population sample. Risk aversion is, furthermore, negatively correlated with income within our (...) sample, but does not correlate with wealth. This also casts doubt on high levels of risk aversion causing failure to adopt new technologies, which we discuss. (shrink)

There is a great deal of interest among business ethicists of today on the topic of spirituality of work. The connection between spirituality and business ethics has been acknowledged in scholarly literature, but this connection is expressed in different ways. Nonetheless, there is a growing consensus that spirituality and corporate profitability are not mutually exclusive. This essay presents a spirituality of work from the perspective of Hindu religion. Hinduism is one of the major religions in the world comprising 15% of (...) the world population. In its origin, Hinduism is somewhat a geographical term. It encompasses the various beliefs, spiritual practices, and rituals of people who originally inhabited the Indus Valley. Hinduism is not a single religion, in the sense that the term religion is understood in the Western context. Treating it as one tradition without considering its diverse and pluralistic character as well as the historical and textual factors that influence its development and complexities is highly problematic. This study explores a Hindu spirituality of work using Bhagavadgita as its primary source – one of the most important texts in Hinduism. (shrink)

Based on prior studies which show that firms headquartered in high religiosity counties exhibit high level of business ethics, this study examines whether these firms are associated with low audit risk, and therefore low audit fees. In investigating this relationship, we draw a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity of auditees. Using a sample of 25,872 U.S. observations from 2003 to 2012, we find that intrinsic religiosity of the auditees is associated with low audit fees after controlling for auditee extrinsic (...) religiosity, social capital, firm-specific characteristics, and county-specific characteristics. Furthermore, we find that external monitoring weakens the negative relationship between auditee intrinsic religiosity and audit fees. Finally, we conclude that the effect of auditor religiosity on audit fees is a regional effect that may affect the relationship between audit fees and auditee intrinsic religiosity. (shrink)

A number of paradigms have been proposed to understand the sources of meaningful work, but a non-Western approach has attracted little attention. This study aims to make a theoretical contribution toward an understanding of meaningful work from a virtue-ethics framework that is culturally meaningful and relevant to Filipino realities and their distinct cultural heritage. It develops a paradigm for a Filipino view of meaningful work that could guide both researchers and practitioners in business ethics by defining what is meaningful work, (...) explaining why it is important, and presenting some examples of concrete measures that management can utilize to promote meaningful work in the Philippine workplace. (shrink)

Ferdinand Mount has been fascinated by the great thinkers and politicians who have shaped human history over the past two millennia In this fascinating, and provocative book, he examines the proposals for a political theory from a number of widely different historical figures. Twelve key people, from the great orator and statesman of Ancient Greece (Pericles) to the inspiration of the founding of the state of Pakistan (Muhammad Iqbal) we take a colourful and rip-roaring journey through the historical figures (...) who have both inspired and provoked Mount in equal measure. The lives of men such as Jesus Christ, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Jefferson are discussed and comparisons are drawn between the various approaches each figure promoted in their works - whether philosophical, or political theories. For those wishing to be guided by Mount's choices and be swept along by his brilliantly erudite prose, this will be a particular enjoyable read. Lots of colour, humour and passion governed all these people careers and Mount brings them to life like no one else can. Praise for the international-bestselling Tears of the Rajas:- 'Mount is a skilled and fluent writer who does his subject justice' --Literary Review 'Mount relates this remarkable story with a gentle wit, a lightness of touch, a boyish enthusiasm as well as a genius for the telling pen-portrait... It is a remarkable story, and cumulatively amounts to an epic panorama of British Indian history much more substantial than the 'collection of Indian tales, a human jungle book', which Mount modestly describes as his aim in the introduction.' --William Dalrymple, The Spectator 'What [Mount] provides instead is of far greater value: a perceptive antidote to nationalistic prejudicial thinking, and an opportunity for a greater understanding of the aftereffects of British imperialism in some of the world's most troubled regions.' Sunday Times 'Although Tears of the Rajas is replete with stirring tales of adventure, it is a deeply humane book. Mount's heart is at all times with the people of India, whose lives are turned upside down by blundering attempts at modernisation.' The Times. (shrink)

Ferdinand Pöhlmann argues that a sense of one’s own basic abilities to move is a constitutive condition on the ability to perceive the world spatially. This constitutive relation explains why egocentric spatial representation is to be regarded as a kind of self-representation. In arguing for these claims, conceptual as well as empirical questions are discussed and an overview of accounts that take action as a constitutive condition on spatial representation is given. The picture that emerges is linked to the (...) phenomenological (Scheler) as well as to the analytic (Evans) tradition in the Philosophy of Mind.​. (shrink)

A number of paradigms have been proposed to understand the sources of meaningful work, but a non-Western approach has attracted little attention. Because some authors have argued that meaningful work has positive valence that has eudaimonic rather than hedonic content, a virtue-ethics approach to meaningful work has been used. Virtue ethicists acknowledge that our work and places of employment have a profound influence in shaping our character and living a fulfilled life. This study aims to make a theoretical contribution toward (...) an understanding of meaningful work from a virtue-ethics framework that is culturally meaningful and ethically relevant to Filipino realities and their distinct national heritage. It develops a conceptual model for a Filipino view of meaningful work that could guide both researchers and practitioners in business ethics by explaining what makes work meaningful, justifying why this is important, and presenting some examples of concrete measures that management can utilize to promote meaningful work in the Philippine workplace. By integrating Filipino virtues in conceptualizing meaningful work, I believe that a theoretical advancement is made toward a pluralistic and multicultural understanding of the concept, especially through the lens of virtue-ethics. (shrink)

RésuméL'auteur rappelle tout d'abord que, sous le měme titre, il a publié en 1936 un ouvrage qui vient d'ětre rééditéà la Librairie A. Blanchard.Dans un premier chapitre, l'auteur compare certains titres de cet ouvrage avec ceux proposés par les rapporteurs du colloque. Les deuxième et troisième chapitres posent la question de l'autonomie totale des mathématiques telle que les recherches formalistes l'ont abordée à travers certaines études récentes et concluent à l'impossibilité d'une autonomie totale.En conclusion, l'exercice des mathématiques se présente comme (...) une synthèse dialectique entre trois aspects irréductibles entre eux, l'aspect théorique de la conception et de la matière des formes mathématiques, l'aspect expérimental où les formes mathématiques se chargent de leur fonction informationnelle et l'intuition par laquelle se manifeste le pouvoir de création de la personne mathématicienne. (shrink)

Cultural comparisons enjoy increasing popularity in economics. Since cultural comparison must abandon random allocation to treatments, it is unclear whether differences found between countries can be attributed to country characteristics or are merely driven by differences in subject pools. In experiments in two Chinese cities and at two campuses in Ethiopia, we show that within-country differences are negligible. Differences between the two countries, on the other hand, are large.

This study examines from an ethical framework the circumstances of workers who are engaged in non-professional services that are offered through corporations that are organized to serve high volume of costumers. Drawing on the relevant ethical teachings of the Catholic social tradition (CST), it explores some practices, strategies, and policies that could address the problems experienced by many service providers in the United States today. CST refers to a wide variety of documents of the magisterium of the Catholic Church which (...) respond to the changing social and economic challenges of the modern world. The study argues that the primacy of the person, love and subsidiarity, sense of community, and respect for worker’s rights and unionism in CST are not only moral principles that uphold intrinsic human goods, they are likewise instrumental to operational effectivity because they promote job satisfaction, smooth interpersonal relationship, and long-term commitment with the company. They enable service providers to work efficiently, deliver exceptional service, and act as conduit between the customers and the business establishment, rather than simply being caught between their conflicting demands. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the normative core of the recent European riots, when young rebels reacted to the disregard for their civic claims to equal treatment. Referring to the available data and facts, the essay uses the example of the two biggest riots in contemporary French and British history to show that prevailing analyses only grasp certain aspects of these events: these riots were primarily neither ‘race riots’, ‘issueless riots’ nor ‘riots of defective consumers’. Nourished in particular by experiences with the (...) police and the school system in the urban districts from which the rioters recruited, rage was directed against the symbols and embodiments of a state that has failed to live up to its promise of equality. It is the everyday undermining of the principle of their equality as citizens and the physically experienced violation of minimum constitutional standards that best explain the motivations of those participating in the riots. (shrink)

-The ethical basis of metaphysics.- 'Useless' knowledge.- Truth.- Lotze's monism.- Non-Euclidean geometry and the Kantian a priori.- The metaphysics of the time-process.- Reality and 'idealism.'- Darwinism and design.- The place of pessimism in philosophy.- Concerning Mephistopheles.- On preserving appearances.- Activity and substance.- Humism and humanism.- Solipsism.- Infallibility and toleration.- Freedom and responsibility.- The desire for immortality.- The ethical significance of immortality.- Philosophy and the scientific investigation of a future life.

Burning questions.--The humanistic view of life.--Must empiricism be limited?--Truth-seekers and sooth-sayers.--Must pragmatists disagree?--Humanisms and humanism.--Has philosophy any message for the world?--Must philosophy be dull?--Is idealism incurably ambiguous?--The ultra-Gothic Kant.--Goethe and the Faustian way of salvation.--Plato's Phaedo and the ancient hope of immortality.--Plato's Republic.--How far does science need determinism?--The relativity of metaphysics.--Ethics, casuistry, and life.--Prophecy and destiny.--The crumbling British empire.--Can democracy survive?--The possibility of a United States of Europe.--Ant-men or super-men?--Fascisms and dictatorships.--Humanist logic and theory of knowledge.--Multi-valued logics - and others.--Data, (...) datives, and ablatives.--Are all men mortal?--How is "exactness" possible? (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to situate the ethics of Karol Wojtyla in the context of personalist philosophy - a 20th century philosophical and theological movement that seeks to investigate reality from the point of view of the human person. Personalism places persons and personal relationships at the center of theory and practice and explores the significance of personhood across disciplines and traditions. In terms of methodology, personalism takes into consideration the data gathered by empirical sciences and our lived (...) experiences as part of our community. While not to be thought of exclusively as a moral philosophy, most personalist philosophies place strong emphasis on ethical concerns. Personalist philosophers maintain that experience ought to be the starting point for the philosophical analysis of the person. At the outset, it must be clarified that this paper is not a systematization of the ethics of Wojtyla per se for there is no such thing as Wojtyla's ethics that can be set apart from other ethical systems in general or from Christian ethics in particular. Wojtyla did not develop his own “original” ethical system or philosophy. As many critics have pointed out, Wojtyla’s philosophical project can be best described as incomplete. His work is a picture of Aristotelian-Thomism enriched by phenomenological analysis of the human person. He develops a phenomenology of the subject grounded on a personalist principle. (shrink)

"Verèoffentlicht im Rahmen des Projektes 'Gesamtausgabe Ferdinand Ebner' im Auftrag von: Forschungsinstitut Brenner-Archiv, Universitèat Innsbruck; Dipartimento di Scienze filologiche e storiche, Universita di Trento; Philosophisches Institut der theologischen Fakultèat, Universitèat Salzburg"--P. [2].

In this paper, the philosopher of life, Ferdinand Fellmann, contrasts the European and Chinese feelings of life based on his own understanding. Both life feelings have their own cultural foundations. Based on this comparison, he argues that a certain balance can be sought between the two cultures in order to achieve common human values.

The research is a comparative study of the atomic theories of Kanada and Democritus. Because of their pluralistic tendencies, emphasis on causality, their materialistic account of sense knowledge, and their attempt to explain the physical system by means of reduction to the configuration of its constitutive elements, both philosophers present an epistemological base that could accommodate scientific inquiry. Notwithstanding the early and expansive beginning of Indian atomism, modern scientific atomic theory traces its origin to Democritus. Through cross-cultural critical engagement of (...) parallel ideas between Kanada and Democritus, the paper aims to discover the common problems that they dealt with in order to further our understanding of the early history of atomic theory, to evaluate the relative merits and limitations of their proposed solutions, to resolve some difficulties that each account faces by appealing to the other, and to highlight their contributions to the emergence of atomic worldview. (shrink)

The term “Presocratics” refers to a group of Greek thinkers who lived not later than Socrates and who were not decisively influenced by him. They are often referred to as the first philosophers as they represent the dawn of human speculation in the West. The essay examines the fragments of major Presocratics - Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empidocles and Anaxagoras, which contain their views and arguments as reported by subsequent authors. Although these fragments are incomplete and are based (...) on secondary quotations, it is possible to sift through them and develop coherent and logical interpretations that approximate the original idea and intentions of these philosophers. The aim of this essay is to shed light on the philosophical meaning and significance of the concept of Arche (ἀρχή) – an untranslatable Greek word that connotes origin, principle, first in the series, or source, which constitutes the central thread of speculation among the Presocratics and their most influential contribution to the history of Western thought. (shrink)

The notion of the subjective dimension of work has its roots in Catholic Social Teaching. This essay offers a Buddhist perspective on this topic. Although there is no distinction between the subjective-objective dimensions of work in traditional Buddhist texts, Buddhist teaching on karma contains implicit affirmation of the subjective dimension of work as the source of the morality of work, and this notion is a useful explanatory framework in understanding right livelihood in contemporary setting. While Buddhist perspective on subjectivity of (...) work is consistent with the view of Catholic Social Teaching, consideration of Buddhism in our conceptualization of the subjective dimension of work will challenge us to revise and expand the concept and practice of meaningful work to integrate the wellbeing of workers, interpersonal relationships, meditative practice (mindfulness) and concern for the environment. (shrink)

This article presents an ethical analysis and critique of personalized service in the tradition of Catholic social teaching (CST) that is both Catholic and Personalist. It tackles the ethical issues involved when service delivery is personalized, issues that affect both the consumers and the service providers. It focuses on nonprofessional services that are offered by low-skilled blue-collar workers through corporations that are organized to produce efficient service to a high volume of consumers. Customer service involves intersubjectivity, that is, interaction between (...) two persons as subjects. Ethics in the service context is not only about treating consumers in a just manner; the threats to the personhood of the service providers are also significant, for their work cannot be separated from their very being. By focusing on the ethical issues of emotional labor and consumerism of human service, the study will argue that the human interaction in personalized service runs the risk of alienating us from our authentic selves and from each other. If the objective of personalized service is to create authentic human relationship in the service encounter, the latter can arise even in a nonpersonalized service. We do not have to personalize our actions in order to create genuine human interaction. Instead, what we must do is to treat each other as persons. (shrink)