In Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society, Thich Nhat Hanh lays out the foundation for an international solidarity movement based on a shared sense of compassion, mindful consumption, and right action. Following these principles, he believes, is the path to world peace. The book is based on our increased global interconnectedness and subsequent need for harmonious communication and a shared ethic to make our increasingly globalized world a more peaceful place. The book will be appreciated by people of all (...) faiths and cultural backgrounds. While based on the basic Buddhist teachings of the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path, Thich Nhat Hanh boldly leaves Buddhist terms behind as he offers his contribution to the creation of a truly global and nondenominational blueprint to overcoming deep-seated divisions and a vision of a world in harmony and the preservation of the planet. Key topics include the true root causes of discrimination; the exploration of the various forms of violence; economic, social, and sexual violence. He encourages the reader to practice nonviolence in all daily interactions, elaborates on the practice of generosity, and teaches the art of deep listening and loving speech to help reach a compromise and reestablish communication after misunderstandings have escalated into conflicts. Good Citizens also contains a new wording of the Five Mindfulness Trainings (traditionally called "precepts") for lay practitioners, bringing them in line with modern-day needs and realities. In their new form they are concrete and practical guidelines of ethical conduct that can be accepted by all traditions. Good Citizens also includes the complete text of the UN Manifesto 2000, a declaration of transforming violence and creating a culture of peace for the benefit of the children of the world. It was drafted by numerous Peace Nobel Prize recipients and signed by over 100 million people worldwide. Coinciding with a US presidential election year, Good Citizens reaches across all political backgrounds and faith traditions. It shows that dualistic thinking--Republican/Democrat, Christian/Muslim--creates tension and a false sense of separateness. When we realize that we share a common ethic and moral code, we can create a community that can change the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics by Daniel Callahan, and: Why the Church Needs Bioethics: A Guide to the Wise Engagement with Life’s Challenges ed. by John F. Kilner, and: Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics by Neil MesserAndrea Vicini SJIn Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics By Daniel Callahan (edited by Arthur Caplan) CAMBRIDGE, MA: MIT PRESS, 2012. XVII + 206 (...) PP. $29.00Why the Church Needs Bioethics: A Guide to the Wise Engagement with Life’s Challenges Edited by John F. Kilner GRAND RAPIDS: ZONDERVAN, 2011. 304 PP. $26.99Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics By Neil Messer LONDON: SCM PRESS, 2011. XI + 236 PP. $36.20With their specific styles, targeted readerships, and overall goals, these three volumes provide diverse but synergic ways to articulate and expand bioethical reflection in today’s society. Daniel Callahan is undoubtedly one of the founders of the field of bioethics. In Search of the Good: A Life in Bioethics is a fascinating memoir where, in a very engaging and personal way, Callahan unveils his intellectual development, career, and major interests. At the same time, he provides a critical lens to examine the history of bioethics in the United States. It shows his “abiding fascination with the human nature, scope, and validity of ethics as part of human life, and a similar strong interest in the ways that the scientific knowledge of medicine influences how we think about our health and mortality and shapes the ways we live our lives” (xvi). In particular, he describes how his philosophical training, and philosophical mind, led him to address the burgeoning ethical questions in biology and medicine and, thereby, to contribute to the founding of today’s bioethics.By sharing his intellectual journey with great honesty and transparency, Callahan guides his readers from his initial philosophical questioning to the later critical developments that have shaped bioethics as a theoretical and practical discipline in the last forty years. The list of topics that he has studied is impressive—from birth control to heart transplants, from end-of-life issues to embryonic stem cell research, and from market-driven health care to medical rationing. Drawing on his time as editor of the famous liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal in the 1960s, Callahan narrates his 1969 founding of the Hastings Center in cooperation with the author and psychiatrist Willard Gaylin. He describes the [End Page 196] stages in the life of this first bioethics research institution in the world, focusing on the years of its success (1980–86) and then on the routinization of its charisma (1986–96). More recent years have seen Callahan questioning medical progress and stressing the urgency of critically examining the goals of today’s medicine, even including discussion topics that are often avoided.Bioethics scholars and students will enjoy In Search of the Good. They will be able to integrate their own historical study of this discipline with Callahan’s personal memoir, which gives a human face to issues and debates. Moreover, bioethicists will be stimulated to reassess their own intellectual engagement and reflect on the future developments of this interdisciplinary discipline whose “roots lie in the humanities” (167).John Kilner, director of bioethics programs and professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, takes a broader approach in Why the Church Needs Bioethics. The volume includes contributions from an interdisciplinary group of thirty-one Christian leaders with diverse expertise, ranging from medicine, business, and law to biblical studies, theology, counseling, and intercultural and pastoral ministry. Nineteen leaders contributed essays, and twelve offered their critiques to earlier drafts. This collaborative effort is praiseworthy, but at the same time it leaves readers desiring more cohesive reflections and a synthetic theological voice.The volume considers three cases emblematic of major human quests: reproductive technologies for a better birth; enhancing drugs for a better life; and end-of-life care for a better death. Each case is discussed by experts from three different disciplines—biblical theology, practical theology, and other secular professions (business, law, or health care)—followed by a specifically bioethical essay. The volume ends with two conclusive contributions discussing how preaching and wisdom... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Will to Power in Nietzsche’s Published Works and the NachlassLinda L. WilliamsIt is universally acknowledged by scholars of Nietzsche’s work that will to power is one of the most important notions in Nietzsche’s writings, but strangely, like the other “central” notions of eternal recurrence and the Übermensch, there are relatively few aphorisms in either the published or unpublished material that include the term. In the case of (...) will to power, however, Nietzsche promises in a footnote in On the Genealogy of Morals to discuss and explore the notion of will to power in a book entitled The Will to Power. 1 Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, among others, have argued persuasively that Nietzsche abandoned this project. 2 Nevertheless, the phrase “will to power” remains the most notorious feature of Nietzsche’s philosophy, probably due to its unfortunate and mistaken connections with the Third Reich. As Walter Kaufmann notes, the notion of will to power did not “spring fully formed from Nietzsche’s brow like Pallas Athena.” 3 This was an idea that evolved over time. This paper examines both the published and his unpublished writings (the Nachlass) to gain a better understanding of how this important phrase developed.The Nachlass can be divided roughly into three different kinds of work. 4 The first kind is comprised of the works Nietzsche was editing right before his collapse. These works are Ecce Homo, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and The Antichrist, and they were so polished that we can safely take them as [End Page 447] equal in status to the works that Nietzsche had already published or, like Twilight of the Idols, were being published at the time of his collapse. The second kind are Nietzsche’s early, finished pieces that were never published, the so-called Schriften, primarily his lectures and writings while he was employed at Basel. These pieces are presumably complete and polished, although Nietzsche chose not to publish them, but they do not affect this inquiry, since will to power was a relatively late concept for Nietzsche.The third kind of work consists of Nietzsche’s notes, which vary from sentence fragments or single sentences to sketchy outlines of various projects to several long paragraphs in essay form. Nietzsche’s notebooks looked like anyone’s notebook, with passages lined out, words jotted in the margins, and overwriting. Some of the entries in the Nachlass can be found with only minor revisions in the books Nietzsche had published, and since he painstakingly recopied his books in his neatest handwriting right before he sent them to his editor, these strikingly similar entries are most probably the penultimate copy drafts of the published aphorisms.The writings that did not find their way into publication in any form are problematic. Are they rough drafts of some future work which Nietzsche was unable to complete due to his illness? If so, some of these controversial notes would have been waiting for years. Are they ideas that Nietzsche entertained but ultimately rejected? If so, we should not place them on par with the ideas in his published works. Even if we consider these notes rough drafts of future works, it remains unclear whether we should consider what is written in these notes to be as indicative of what Nietzsche thought as the works he authorized for publication. Sometimes what is written in the unpublished notes on a particular topic is very different from what is written on that topic in the published works. Bernd Magnus made this kind of case against the Nachlass notes concerning eternal recurrence, 5 and I want to make a similar claim about the notes concerning will to power. Reviewing the Nachlass notes in conjunction with the published aphorisms will give us a better understanding of how the published and unpublished notes differ.The term “will to power” (Wille zur Macht) first appeared in publication in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 6 In the aphorism “On 1001 Goals” Nietzsche describes a people’s tablets of good and bad as the voice of its will to power. Wille zur Macht appears in only two more aphorisms in the course of this long work, in “On Self-Overcoming” and in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NATURAL LAW, IMPARTIALISM, AND OTHERS' GOOD* MARK C. MURPHY Georgetown University Washington, D.C. The title of a recent article by Henry Veatch and Joseph Rautenberg asks "Does the Grisez-Finnis-Boyle Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?'"; the answer that the text of that article produces is, unsurprisingly, "Yes." Veatch and Rautenberg argue that despite superficial similarities between the moral theory defended by Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle (...) and the eudaimonist moral theories defended by Aristotle and Aquinas, the Grisez-Finnis-Boyle (hereafter "GFB") view is more akin to utilitarian impartialism than to Aristotelian or Thomistic eudaimonism. I shall argue that although Veatch and Rautenberg are correct to label the GFB view a type of impartialism, they misunderstand both the character of its impartialism and the mistake on which it rests. A clearer understanding of what is at issue between impartialist and eudaimonist natural law theories will bring into focus the severity of the problem faced in trying to decide between these accounts. I Call the thesis that all correct practical reasoning proceeds from one's own good as a principle "eudaimonism"; call the thesis that all correct practical reasoning proceeds from the good * I owe a debt of gratitude to Melissa Barry, Lenn Goodman, Trenton Merricks, and (especially) Thomas Williams for their comments on early drafts of this article. 1 Henry Veatch and Joseph Rautenberg, "Does the Grisez-Finnis-Boyle Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?" Review of Metaphysics 44 (1991): 807-830. 53 54 MARK C. MURPHY impartially considered "impartialism." As Veatch and Rautenberg point out, the GFB view endorses impartialism: from the point of view of practical reason, whether a good is instantiated in you or in me makes no difference.2 This impartialism places the GFB view on the side of the utilitarians against the eudaimonism of Aristotle and Aquinas. That Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle part ways with Aristotle and Aquinas on this issue is, of course, no argument against the GFB view. Veatch and Rautenberg attempt to call the GFB impartialism into question, though, by arguing both that the GFB impartialism has absurd consequences and that the argument by which Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle reach the impartialist thesis contains plain errors. Veatch and Rautenberg hold that the impartialism advocated by the GFB view is a result of modern moral philosophy's disconnecting the concept of a good from that of human needs, desires, and interests: The notion of 'good' [on the 'modern' view] needs to be denatured and completely dissociated from all reference to our liking, desiring, or finding pleasing those things which we take to be good. Instead, all 'goods' are to be converted into so many 'oughts', and as 'oughts' they are to be furthered and pursued.3 On the modern view, to assert that pleasure is a good is to assert only that pleasure ought to be promoted; to say that knowledge is a good is to say only that knowledge ought to be pursued. From this sundering of the relationship between the idea of a good and that of human needs and interests it is a small step 2 Although both utilitarianism and the GFB view endorse impartialism, they differ importantly in that utilitarianism is consequentialist whereas the GFB view is not. To move from the impartialist thesis that the good impartially considered is the starting point for practical reason to the utilitarian thesis that one ought to act so as to maximize overall goodness requires, among other presuppositions, the assumption that another's good and my own are commensurable. This premise the GFB view denies; no two instantiations of basic values between which choice is possible are commensurable. See Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis, "Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends," American Journal ofJurisprudence 32 (1987): 99-151, esp. 110.· 1 Veatch and Rautenberg, "Grisez-Finnis-Boyle Moral Philosophy," 816. NATURAL LAW, IMPARTIALISM, AND OTHERS' GOOD 55 indeed to impartialism: once goods are no longer such in virtue of anyone's needing or desiring them, there is no reason to promote one's own good over that of anyone else: "Instead, all goods having now been converted into so many 'oughts', it would seem to... (shrink)

The first section of the Groundwork begins “It is impossible to imagine anything at all in the world, or even beyond it, that can be called good without qualification— except a good will.”1 Kant’s explanation and defense of this claim is followed by an explanation and defense of another related claim, that only actions performed out of duty have moral worth. He explains that actions performed out of duty are those done from respect for the moral law, (...) and then culminates the first section with a formulation of that law, “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law”. Kant dubs this fundamental principle of morality “the Categorical Imperative”. (shrink)

Good-willed or morally worthy action is one that is morally right non-accidentally: as she performs it the agent is, in some way, responsive to its rightness. Several recent accounts have analyzed good-willed action in terms of a composition of right action plus some requirements on the agent’s psychological condition, but tend to leave unexamined the direction of conceptual dependence between right action and good-willed action. I argue that significant difficulties arise when right action is taken as primary (...) and intelligible independently of good-willed action, often relying on the standard causalist picture of agency. Inspired by Aristotle’s notion of virtuous action and Kant’s treatment of action from duty, I sketch an alternative view in which the idea of mere rightness is conceptually dependent on that of a good-willed self-conscious action done for reasons. (shrink)

For a fixed natural number \, the Hart–Shelah example is an abstract elementary class with amalgamation that is categorical exactly in the infinite cardinals less than or equal to \. We investigate recently-isolated properties of AECs in the setting of this example. We isolate the exact amount of type-shortness holding in the example and show that it has a type-full good \-frame which fails the existence property for uniqueness triples. This gives the first example of such a frame. Along (...) the way, we develop new tools to build and analyze good frames. (shrink)

Why should we deliberate? I discuss a Kantian response to this query and argue that we cannot as rational beings avoid deliberation in principle; and that we have good reasons to consider the value and strength of Kant's philosophical investigations concerning fundamental moral issues and their relevance for the question of why we ought to deliberate. I also argue that deliberation is a wide duty. This means that it has to be set as an end, that it is meritorious, (...) and that we cannot specify exactly what acts can be identified with it or are required for its realization. I begin by discussing why we cannot avoid deliberation in principle, that deliberation is a wide duty and why we ought to set it as an end. In the second part I argue how deliberation can be acknowledged in cosmopolitan education, and how we can inquire into the quality of communication in terms of deliberation in such an education or elsewhere. (shrink)

The compass point of Kantian ethics is Kant’s categorical imperative. The compass point of Kantian ethics directs persons to ends of actions. It directs to ends the attainment of which can be universally prescribed. It directs away from those which can not. Most reviews of the demands of the categorical imperative tend torest in an assay of rationality and its demands. I think that this is a mistake. I think that on Kant’s mature view, the conscience, and so the categorical (...) imperative, have nothing necessarily to do with rationality at all. The following work develops this position. (shrink)

Kant begins the First Section of the Groundwork with a statement that is one of the most memorable in all his writings: “There is nothing it is possible to think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without limitation, excepting only a good will” (Ak 4:393).[i] Due to the textual prominence of this claim, readers of the Groundwork have usually proceeded to read that work, and (...) Kant’s other ethical works as well, on the assumption that the truth of that assertion, and therefore the conception of the good will, both occupy a fundamental place in Kantian ethics. The assumption, however, becomes increasingly hard to sustain as we gain more familiarity with Kant’s ethical writings and better understanding of his ethical theory.[ii] As for the concept of the good will, Kant does avow the intention of “developing” it (Ak 4:397), and he goes on to thematize concepts that he thinks of as related to the good will (the moral worth of an action, acting from duty). But he never provides an explicit account of what he takes a ‘good will’ to be.[iii]. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Intro -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: "The best-laid plans of mice and men ..." -- Chapter 2: "Why won't you do what we think is best for you?" -- Chapter 3: How can I stop screwing up? -- Chapter 4: "Ouch!" -- Why did that backfire? -- Chapter 5: Scientific progress -- that's a good thing, right? -- Chapter 6: Surely trying to protect people can't be bad? -- Chapter 7: Can bad intentions turn out for the good? (...) -- Chapter 8: The upside -- unlooked for benefits -- Chapter 9: So -- how can we do good better? -- References. (shrink)

Martin Hollis; Good Will in Politics, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 10, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 167–171, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.19.

We combine two notions in AECs, tameness and good λ-frames, and show that they together give a very well-behaved nonforking notion in all cardinalities. This helps to fill a longstanding gap in classification theory of tame AECs and increases the applicability of frames. Along the way, we prove a complete stability transfer theorem and uniqueness of limit models in these AECs.

This article argues that Stanley Cavell's notion of moral perfectionism must be understood, within the American cultural context, as deeply intertwined with myths of heroic American masculinity. It traces connections between Cavell's descriptions of moral perfectionism, the transcendentalist authors on whom he relies, and writings about the myth of the American frontier hero. When understood as a tradition of masculinity, it becomes possible to trace moral perfectionism across much wider areas of American cinematic culture than Cavell's reading suggests; Good (...) Will Hunting is used as an example which further illuminates the relationship between moral perfectionism and American masculinities. Psychoanalysis, a major feature of Good Will Hunting as well as an important aspect of Cavellian moral perfectionism, must also be revisited in terms of the differences in its popular mythologisation for men versus for women. (shrink)

This paper considers the potentially important role played by non-verbal communication in constraining pragmatic processing. Attention is paid to claims about the role of emotion in memory encoding and recall, its role in the formulation of plans and goals, and the creation of a shared emotional sense through various interpersonal processes. It is argued that ignoring these factors can lead to pragmatic theories which overestimate the processing demands facing the conversationalist, and that this overestimation will be problematic for any (...) systems which seek to build on these theories in the future. (shrink)

A debt of good will is incurred when a person becomes the beneficiary of significant assistance or favor given by another. Usually, the beneficiary is in acute need of the assistance given or favor granted. This provides an opportunity for the giving of help to serve as a vehicle for the expression of sympathy or concern. The debt could then be appreciated as one of good will because, by catering to another person's pressing need, the benefactor (...) is able to express positive dispositions towards the beneficiary. It is not merely the receipt of the assistance or favor that puts the recipient in a position of indebtedness. The indebtedness is created by the benefactor's kagandahang loob. An act can be considered to convey kagandahang loob only if it is done out of kusang loob ; and can only be considered to have been done out of kusang loob if the agent is not acting under external compulsion, is motivated by positive feelings towards the beneficiary, and is not motivated by the anticipation of reward. These conditions entail debt-of-goodwill relationships where the benefactor has no right to demand reciprocity but the beneficiary has a "self-imposed" obligation to repay kagandahang loob with kagandahang loob. Debts of good will are about some forms of justice. But we should not reduce all talk about debts of good will to talk about justice. (shrink)

If any action is to be morally good it is not enough that it should conform to the moral law-it must also be done for the sake of the moral law: where this is not so, the conformity is only too contingent and precarious, since the nonmoral ground at work will now and then produce actions which accord with the law, but very often actions which transgress it.

Information plays a major role in any moral action. ICT have revolutionized the life of information, from its production and management to its consumption, thus deeply affecting our moral lives. Amid the many issues they have raised, a very serious one, discussed in this paper, is labelled the tragedy of the Good Will. This is represented by the increasing pressure that ICT and their deluge of information are putting on any agent who would like to act morally, when (...) informed about actual or potential evils, but who also lacks the resources to do much about them. In the paper, it is argued that the tragedy may be at least mitigated, if not solved, by seeking to re-establish some equilibrium, through ICT themselves, between what agents know about the world and what they can do to improve it. (shrink)

I consider three questions concerning the relation of the good will to the moral worth of actions. (1) Does a good will consist simply in acting from the motive of duty? (2) Does acting from the motive of duty presuppose that one has a good will? (3) Does the fact that one has a good wilI entail that all of one’s duty-fulfilling actions have moral worth, even if they are not (directly) motivated by (...) duty? I argue that while only persons with a good will are capable of acting from the motive of duty, it does not follow either that a good will consists in acting from duty or that if one has a good will, all of one’s dutiful actions will be motivated by duty. Whereas the good will is constituted by the agent’s highest-order maxim (the moral law itself), moral worth is a function of the agent’s first-order maxims. (shrink)

In the First Section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that a good-willed person “under subjective limitations and hindrances” (G 397) is required “never to act except in such a way that [she] could also will that [her] maxim should become a universal law” (G 402).2 This requirement has come to be known as the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) version of the Categorical Imperative, an “ought” statement expressing a command of reason that “represent[s] (...) an action as objectively necessary of itself, without reference to another end” (G 414). The question of how to understand and apply the FUL has received a great deal of attention in recent years. But Kant’s reasoning for the claim that a good-willed person (of a certain kind) acts in accordance with the FUL has not been investigated with the same degree of thoroughness. My purpose in this paper is to render the structure of Kant’s argument perspicuous, and thereby contribute to its proper evaluation by identifying its true strengths and weaknesses.3 Let us call Kant’s argument “K” and its conclusion “C”. The task at hand requires identification of K’s premises and of the reasoning by means of which C is derived. One of the advantages of clarifying K’s structure in this way is that doing so permits us to answer questions that continue to puzzle even the most sympathetic readers of the First Section. Some of these questions concern three “Propositions” to which Kant 1 draws our attention in the course of his presentation. The First Proposition (call it “P1”) is left unstated, but most commentators agree that it (or at least part of it) should be rendered as follows: (P1) A human action has moral worth only if it is done from duty.4 Kant states the other two propositions (call the Second “P2” and Third “P3”) explicitly: (P2) An action from duty has its moral worth not in the purpose to be attained by it but in the maxim in accordance with which it is decided upon. (G 399). (shrink)