In a world which can be increasingly described as a “society of organizations,” it is incumbent upon organizational researchers to account for the role of organizations in determining the well-being of societies and the individuals that comprise them. Workplace spirituality is a young area of inquiry with potentially strong relevance to the well-being of individuals, organizations, and societies. Previous literature has not examined ethical dilemmas related to workplace spirituality that organizations might expect based upon the co-existence of multiple ethical work (...) climates, nor has previous literature accounted for the relevance of the cosmopolitan source of moral reasoning in the ethical treatment of workplace spirituality. The purpose of this paper is to address these gaps by articulating two such ethical dilemmas related to workplace spirituality: the “quiet desperation” dilemma and the instrumentality dilemma. Moreover, I propose two theoretical contexts that foster “both-and” rather than “either-or” thinking, thereby mitigating the relationships between climate combinations and conflictual aspects of the ethical dilemmas. For the “quiet desperation” dilemma, I propose a person–organization fit perspective to emphasize diversity of individual preferences instead of a managerially prescribed uniformity of spirituality. For the instrumentality dilemma, I propose a multiparadigm approach to workplace spirituality research to avoid the privileging of one research interest over another. I conclude with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has focused attention on the difficulties that evil, suffering, and tragic conflict present to religious belief and moral life. Thinkers have drawn upon many important historical figures, with one significant exception - Augustine. At the same time, there has been a renaissance of work on Augustine, but little discussion of either his work on evil or his influence on contemporary thought. This book fills these gaps. It explores the 'family biography' of the Augustinian tradition by looking at Augustine's (...) work and its development in the writings of Hannah Arendt and Reinhold Niebuhr. Mathewes argues that the Augustinian tradition offers us a powerful, though commonly misconstrued, proposal for understanding and responding to evil's challenges. The book casts new light on Augustine, Niebuhr, and Arendt, as well as on the problem of evil, the nature of tradition, and the role of theological and ethical discourse in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This is the first book-length treatment of the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. The author seeks to provide a metaphysical illumination of the fundamental ecological intuitions that we are in some sense `one with' nature and that everything is connected with everything else. Drawing on contemporary cosmology, systems theory and the history of philosophy, Freya Mathews elaborates a new metaphysics of `interconnectedness'. She offers an inspiring vision of the spiritual implications of ecology, which leads to a deepening of our conception (...) of conservation. (shrink)

Fairness of Artificial Intelligence decisions has become a big challenge for governments, companies, and societies. We offer a theoretical contribution to consider AI ethics outside of high-level and top-down approaches, based on the distinction between “reality” and “world” from Luc Boltanski. To do so, we provide a new perspective on the debate on AI fairness and show that criticism of ML unfairness is “realist”, in other words, grounded in an already instituted reality based on demographic categories produced by institutions. Second, (...) we show that the limits of “realist” fairness corrections lead to the elaboration of “radical responses” to fairness, that is, responses that radically change the format of data. Third, we show that fairness correction is shifting to a “domination regime” that absorbs criticism, and we provide some theoretical and practical avenues for further development in AI ethics. Using an ad hoc critical space stabilized by reality tests alongside the algorithm, we build a shared responsibility model which is compatible with the radical response to fairness issues. Finally, this paper shows the fundamental contribution of pragmatic sociology theories, insofar as they afford a social and political perspective on AI ethics by giving an active role to material actors such as database formats on ethical debates. In a context where data are increasingly numerous, granular, and behavioral, it is essential to renew our conception of AI ethics on algorithms in order to establish new models of responsibility for companies that take into account changes in the computing paradigm. (shrink)

In this paper I take up the claims of a number of recent commentators who have argued that there is no rational basis for a moral judgment against cannibalism because no successful argument against it can be articulated within the dominant consequentialist or neo-Kantian deontological approaches in normative ethics. While I think cannibalism is clearly morally repugnant, it is surprisingly difficult to explain why. I argue not only that a rational justification of the moral wrongness of cannibalism can be given (...) in terms of a broadly Aristotelian virtue ethics, but also that this requires a broader conception of moral value, and corresponding moral obligations, than is typical within the dominant approaches. (shrink)

Biomimicry as a design concept is indeed revolutionary in its implications for human systems of production, but it is a concept in need of further philosophical elaboration and development. To this end certain philosophical principles underlying the organization of living systems generally are identified and it is argued that not only our systems of production but also our psychocultural patterns of desire need to be reorganized in accordance with these principles if we are collectively to achieve the integration into nature (...) to which biomimicry aspires. Even were this reorganization to be effected however, there is still an ethically momentous ambiguity in biomimicry that needs to be teased out before we can be assured that biomimicry will indeed produce the bioinclusive sustainability outcomes that it seems to promise. (shrink)

I argue that a metaphysical controversy, comparable with the ‘pantheism controversy’ of the late 18th century, is being played out today in the world-wide clash between religion and science, in which one side adheres to a strict materialism and the other admits phenomena of inspiritment as having a place in ontology. Just as the pantheism controversy was resolved, to some degree, via the concept of panentheism, so the solution to the contest between science and religion today might be pointing us (...) in a panentheist direction. Taking into account (a) the empirical evidence of science, (b) the widespread evidence of spirit phenomena from different religions and spirit traditions, and (c) that the experience of spirit phenomena varies according to cultural frame of reference, I conclude that spirit phenomena must emanate from something that is common across cultures. The only thing that could be common across cultures is matter: it must be matter itself then that is imbued with spirit. While this position has affinities with panentheism, I argue that ‘panentheism’ is not in fact an appropriate name for it in the 21st century, as this name excludes the experience of many cultures for whom phenomena of inspiritment are not describable in any kind of theistic terms. (shrink)

When feminism rejected women’s traditional roles, it turned instead to masculine roles: a prizing of sex without commitment and an emphasis on career above family. Abortion serves both goals by keeping sex unencumbered and by freeing women from childcare demands that might limit them at work. In both cases, these might not be what women really desire.

As a virtue, loyalty has an ambiguous place in our thinking about moral judgments. We lauded the loyalty of firefighters who risked their lives to save others on 9/11 while condemning the loyalty of those who perpetrated the catastrophe. Responding to such uneasiness and confusion, Loyalty to Loyalty contributes to ongoing conversation about how we should respond to conflicts in loyalty in a pluralistic world. The lone philosopher to base an ethical theory on the virtue of loyalty is Josiah Royce. (...) Loyalty to Loyalty engages Royce's moral theory, revealing how loyalty, rather than being just one virtue among others, is central to living a genuinely moral and meaningful life. Mathew A. Foust shows how the theory of loyalty Royce advances can be brought to bear on issues such as the partiality/impartiality debate in ethical theory, the role of loyalty in liberatory struggle, and the ethics of whistleblowing and disaster response. (shrink)

In Literature, Art and the Pursuit of Decay, Timothy Mathews examines work by a range of writers and painters working in France in the twentieth century. The well-illustrated book engages with canonical figures - Guillaume Apollinaire, Marguerite Duras and Jean Genet, Roland Barthes, Pablo Picasso and René Magritte - as well as more neglected individuals including Robert Desnos and Jean Fautrier. Mathews draws on psychoanalysis, existentialism and poststructuralism to show how both literature and fine art promote the value of generosity (...) in a culture of anxiety and intolerance. Decay emerges as a surprising ally in this quest because of its ability to undermine intellectual complacency and egoism. Integrating theoretical and material approaches to reading and viewing, Mathews engages with the distinctive features of different literary genres and different types of painting to develop an original history of artistic ambition in twentieth-century France. (shrink)

This article connects value-sensitive design to Gibson’s affordance theory: the view that we perceive in terms of the ease or difficulty with which we can negotiate space. Gibson’s ideas offer a nonsubjectivist way of grasping culturally relative values, out of which we develop a concept of political affordances, here understood as openings or closures for social action, often implicit. Political affordances are equally about environments and capacities to act in them. Capacities and hence the severity of affordances vary with age, (...) health, social status and more. This suggests settings are selectively permeable, or what postphenomenologists call multistable. Multistable settings are such that a single physical location shows up differently – as welcoming or hostile – depending on how individuals can act on it. In egregious cases, authoritarian governments redesign politically imbued spaces to psychologically cordon both them and the ideologies they represent. Selective permeability is also orchestrated according to business interests, which is symptomatic of commercial imperatives increasingly dictating what counts as moral and political goods. (shrink)

This paper empirically re(dis)covers a moment of conjuncture within Leicester when an opportunity opened up through multicultural/anti-racist education for schools and colleges to develop their ‘multicultural capital’. It does this through the thematic analysis of the key proximate document Report of the Working Party on Multicultural Education as well as drawing on interview data provided by two important agents who helped to implement Leicester’s/Leicestershire’s moment of multicultural education. This moment generated a symbolic, ideational, and conceptual shift within Leicester’s education provision (...) toward a more culturally inclusive position that began to recognise the cultural capital of non-white students. However, this moment was to be lost in the ‘neoliberal epoch’. It is argued in this paper that neoliberal education policy/practice has become an enabling mechanism for renascent colonial ideology. By re(dis)covering this vision for the official recognition of non-white cultural capital, this paper demonstrates the possibilities for alternative directions within Leicester’s schools and colleges that can challenge neoliberal and colonial conceptions of education. It suggests that there are still spaces and structures that can be re(dis)covered in order for this vision to be enabled. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It has recently been argued that in Analects 17.21, Confucius advises a disciple to do something that he, Confucius, believes to be morally wrong. According to Frederick Choo, despite believing that it is morally wrong to not properly observe the three-year mourning ritual for a deceased parent, Confucius tells Zai Wo that he should do so. Choo offers two justifications for Confucius’s doing this. In this essay, I argue that the justifications Choo offers for Confucius’s advising Zai Wo to (...) do what he believes to be morally wrong are untenable. Indeed, I argue that Confucius does not, in fact, advise Zai Wo to do what he believes to be morally wrong. Instead, I argue that Confucius’s advice to Zai Wo in Analects 17.21 is best understood as an expression of exasperation and sarcasm. (shrink)

Traditionally, the history of American philosophy has been conceived of in terms of an intellectual lineage comprising monumental male figures (e.g., Emerson, Peirce, James, and Dewey). In recent decades, this picture has broadened in scope and nuance. Philosophers once regarded as ancillary have gained recognition as original and influential thinkers in their own right. The last two decades have been witness to the resurgence in scholarly attention to figures such as Josiah Royce and Jane Ad...

The killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and others have instigated widespread debate concerning the ethics and politics of police behavior toward young black men in America. In this article, I show how Josiah Royce’s philosophy of loyalty provides a useful theoretical framework for diagnosing and working to overcome strained relations between police and black citizens in the United States. I begin by establishing the relevance of Royce’s thought to the realm of (...) police ethics. Then, I argue that Royce’s notion of loyalty to loyalty is a useful and powerful lens through which we can examine the practice of police discretion, particularly as it comes to bear on racial profiling and use of force. I conclude by offering what I regard as Roycean recommendations aimed at ameliorating the fractured relationship between police and blacks in America today. (shrink)

Water mattered in medieval Pisa. As it was not a natural port, Pisa had to protect, manage, and maintain its maritime landings and riverine passages to neutralize its Mediterranean competitors and ensure its prosperity. This paper addresses the three bodies of water and waterways most important to the Pisa - the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Auser and Arno rivers - and how architecture interfaced with hydrotopography. Architectural structures defined a unique visual culture in Pisa in practical, topographical, and symbolic ways. (...) The organization of the city, its key monuments, and their ornamentation all demonstrated the significance of the city’s complex relationship with water that was key to Pisa’s success in the Middle Ages. (shrink)

This article adds to previous accounts in the scholarship on Confucius's treatments of grief, mourning, death, and dying. Valuing Confucius’s remark that one must understand life to understand death, it is argued that through Confucius’s example in the Analects, we are guided in our quest for such understanding.

This essay challenges moral exemplarist interpretations of the Analects by focusing on exclusivist attitudes and actions exhibited by Confucius as he is portrayed in the Analects. Attention is drawn to what may be plausibly interpreted as culturalism and speciesism in the Analects. The case for culturalism in the Analects turns on a recurrent distinction therein between the Huá (Chinese) and Yí (non-Chinese; peoples outside of China proper), the latter commonly cast as barbarians—a term deployed similarly to yí being mán (rough; (...) reckless). The case for speciesism in the Analects turns on a number of passages of the Analects recommending a privileging of human interests over those of non-human animals. Acknowledgement of forms of Confucian exclusivism ought to provoke contemporary audiences to critically examine the text and to consider carefully that which ought to be regarded as exemplary and worthy of admiration and emulation in their own lives. (shrink)

Dissecting Bioethics, edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Hayry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics. The department is dedicated to the idea that words defined by bioethicists and others should not be allowed to imprison people’s actual concerns, emotions, and thoughts. Papers that expose the many meanings of a concept, describe the different readings of a moral doctrine, or provide an alternative angle to seemingly self-evident issues are particularly appreciated. To submit a paper or to discuss (...) a suitable topic, contact Tuija Takala [email protected].:This article examines some of the assumptions and implications associated with the Belmont era context in which the concept of therapeutic misconception was forged. We argue that the justification of therapeutic misconception should be reconsidered based on less paternalistic and more participatory models of research. Finally, we identify conceptual and practical approaches that might better reflect contemporary research practice. (shrink)

In 1621 Bacon fell from power as Lord Chancellor, the highest position in the land. Charged with accepting bribes, he was convicted, fined, imprisoned and exiled from the Court. He died five years later, disgraced and deeply in debt.

Three types of objections have been raised against sweatshops. According to their critics, sweatshops are (1) exploitative, (2) coercive, and (3) harmful to workers. In “The Ethical and Economic Case Against Sweatshop Labor: A Critical Assessment,” Powell and Zwolinski critique all three objections and thereby offer what is arguably the most powerful defense of sweatshops in the philosophical literature to date. This article demonstrates that, whether or not unregulated sweatshops are exploitative or coercive, they are, pace Powell and Zwolinski, harmful (...) to workers. (shrink)

Our appreciation and appropriation of Augustine's thought is hindered by assumptions which serious engagement with his thought makes both visible and dubious. His account of the dynamics of human knowing seems, at first glance, a jumble of confusions, but, once better understood, it helps transform both the terms and the framework of our epistemology. His account of human agency seems similarly confused, but also works, once rightly understood, to transform our vision of what agency is. Further-more, Augustine's different anthropological and (...) metaphysical assumptions provide not only a platform for criticizing what modernity takes for granted but also resources for reconstructing three important issues in Christian ethics. A proper appreciation of Augustinian anthropology offers benefits, then, beyond the merely exegetical. (shrink)

While the bioethics literature demonstrates that the field has spent substantial time and thought over the last four decades on the goals, methods, and desired outcomes for service and training in bioethics, there has been less progress defining the nature and goals of bioethics research and scholarship. This gap makes it difficult both to describe the breadth and depth of these areas of bioethics and, importantly, to gauge their success. However, the gap also presents us with an opportunity to define (...) this scope of work for ourselves and to help shape the broader conversation about the impact of academic research. Because of growing constraints on academic funding, researchers and scholars in many fields are being asked to demonstrate and also forecast the value and impact of their work. To do that, and also to satisfy ourselves that our work has meaningful effect, we must understand how our work can motivate change and how that change can be meaningfully measured. In a field as diverse as bioethics, the pathways to and metrics of change will likewise be diverse. It is therefore critical that any assessment of the impact of bioethics research and scholarship be informed by an understanding of the nature of the work, its goals, and how those goals can and ought to be furthered. In this paper, we propose a conceptual model that connects individual bioethics projects to the broader goals of scholarship, describing the translation of research and scholarly output into changes in thinking, practice, and policy. One of the key implications of the model is that impact in bioethics is generally the result of a collection of projects rather than of any single piece of research or scholarship. Our goal is to lay the groundwork for a thoroughgoing conversation about bioethics research and scholarship that will advance and shape the important conversation about their impact. (shrink)

The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) opens with a series of long takes of a car winding steadily down a road in the Iranian countryside. In other words, it opens with a sequence which, to anybody who knows Kiarostami's work, will be immediately recognizable as typical of it: Life and Nothing More (1992) returns repeatedly to such sequences, and ends with one; such sequences turn up in Through the Olive Trees (1994) and Taste of Cherry (1997); the protagonist of Where (...) is the Friend's Home? (1987) is too young to drive, but we see him from a distance meandering in a similar pattern on more than one occasion (and sequences of the same type return in Certified Copy (2010)). As with the other sequences, the opening of The .. (shrink)

Looking for a way to read the classic texts of Christian antiquity without treating them either as if they were written yesterday or as if they were archaeological artefacts, the author endorses Meilaender's endeavor to develop the insights of Augustine in the modern context. He nevertheless suggests that a different way of drawing the analogy between sex and eating would better capture Augustine's distinctive way of joining theology and ethics and would enable a more vigorous defense of Augustine against modern (...) critics of his treatment of sexuality. (shrink)