Veeraswamy, JD; Gogineni, Babu As part of the Adopt a Dalit Village Project the following awareness programs were organized to help bring the Dalits of Ravulapally out of a life of superstition and to point them to a life of scientific temper. This was done through various activities, all of which were aimed to provide an overall boost to the human development of the community, by involving them in their own growth, in such a manner as to build capacity and (...) capability within the community. (shrink)

Why do moral people so often fail to act morally? Standard scientific answers point to poor moral judgment (based on deficient character development, reason, or intuition) or to situational pressure. I consider a third possibility: a relative lack of truly moral motivation and emotion. What has been taken for moral motivation is often instead a subtle form of egoism. Recent research provides considerable evidence for moral hypocrisy—motivation to appear moral while, if possible, avoid the cost of actually being moral—but very (...) little evidence for moral integrity—motivation to actually be moral. The lack of truly moral motivation may, in turn, be linked to a lack of truly moral emotion, at least in response to violation of certain moral standards. (shrink)

Most works on moral psychology direct our attention to the positive role morality plays for us as individuals, as a society, even as a species. In What's Wrong with Morality?, C. Daniel Batson takes a different approach: he looks at morality as a problem. The problem is not that it is wrong to be moral, but that our morality often fails to produce these intended results. Why? Some experts believe the answer lies in lack of character. Others say we (...) are victims of poor judgment. If we could but discern what is morally right, whether through logical analysis and discourse, through tuned intuition and a keen moral sense, or through feeling and sentiment, we would act accordingly. Implicit in these different views is the assumption that if we grow up properly, if we can think and feel as we should, and if we can keep a firm hand on the tiller through the storms of circumstance, all will be well. We can realize our moral potential. Many of our best writers of fiction are less optimistic. Astute observers of the human condition like Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Eliot, Tolstoy, and Twain suggest our moral psychology is more complex. These writers encourage us to look more closely at our motives, emotions, and values, at what we really care about in the moral domain. In this volume, Batson examines this issue from a social-psychological perspective. Drawing on research suggesting our moral life is fertile ground for rationalization and deception, including self-deception, Batson offers a hard-nosed analysis of morality and its limitations in this expertly written book. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sinai and the Areopagus:Philip Melanchthon, Natural Law, and the Beginnings of Athenian Legal History in the Shadow of the Schmalkaldic WarAlexander D. BatsonIn late August 1546, Philip Melanchthon had some seriously strange dreams. One night, he saw a man in the Elbe struggling to keep his head above the river's powerful current. As Melanchthon approached to help, he recognized the drowning man's visage: Charles V. Despite Melanchthon's attempts to (...) save him, the river dragged the emperor under and carried him away. Another night, he dreamed that while translating Demosthenes with his friend Joachim Camerarius in the Wittenberg castle (a Melanchthon dream if there ever was one!) he looked out a window to see that the Elbe had turned to blood.1 [End Page 713]These ominous visions reflected the precarious world Melanchthon faced in late summer 1546. Martin Luther, the hero of the German Reformation, had died in February, leaving a gaping hole in the evangelical movement. Further, German Protestantism was facing the largest political crisis in its short history. The Schmalkaldic War had begun in July, only a few weeks prior, and the Reformation faced intense military pressure from Charles V. As the emperor slowly advanced, an anxious Melanchthon lived in constant tension between wild hope that Charles would be defeated and grim fear of massive bloodshed.As the war began, Melanchthon was greatly disturbed by the violence and the potential for disastrous defeat of the Protestant cause. In an August 26 letter, he wrote this to a friend: "Often now, when I look over the Elbe River gliding by me, I sigh and think that, even if I could pour forth a river of tears as great as the Elbe's flow, I would never be able to exhaust the sadness which surrounds my soul because of this civil war. If only Charles had not started it!"2 Should the Schmalkaldic League be defeated and political support for the Reformation be crushed, the true church would be in dangerous waters, just like the emperor in Melanchthon's dream.In the midst of this impending catastrophe, on September 1, 1546, Melanchthon published an unusual work: the Collatio actionum forensium Atticarum et Romanarum praecipuarum (A comparison of the principal Attic and Roman legal actions). In this study, Melanchthon organized and compared the legal actions of Athens and Rome, following the order of the Ten Commandments. In 1546, Greek law was a virtually unknown field. Contemporary legal humanists like Andrea Alciato, Ulrich Zasius, and François Baudouin had devoted their attention almost exclusively to Roman or feudal European law.3 Nearly a century before the publication of sprawling [End Page 714] tomes by the Greek legal scholars Samuel Petit, Claudius Salmasius, and Johannes Meursius, Melanchthon treated the law of ancient Athens as a worthy subject.4 Even more puzzling, Melanchthon devoted himself to this arcane work during a moment of dire political crisis. The unusual subject matter of the Collatio and the urgent circumstances surrounding its publication raise a pair of intriguing questions: Why did Melanchthon think Attic legal actions were important? And why did he think they were worth studying while a military and political disaster loomed on the horizon?Melanchthon valued the ancient pagan laws because they showed how God had revealed legal and moral principles to the gentiles. His study of Attic and Roman law demonstrated how, through natural reason, the classical pagans had attained knowledge of the natural law and implemented it in their own societies.5 As a result, the ancient laws became indispensable to Christians studying law and moral philosophy.6 This work on ancient Greek law was an essential part of Melanchthon's pedagogical project of integrating Christianity and the classical world. As he wrote in the introduction, he had decided to write on Attic legal actions "so that students may know that they are not only formulas for litigation, but also a philosophy and a doctrine of virtue."7 By reconstructing the laws of ancient Athens and comparing them with those of Rome, Melanchthon demonstrated that classical moral and legal thought was in complete agreement with the Decalogue and essential for Christian moral development. [End Page 715... (shrink)

This book traces the scientific search for altruism through numerous studies and attempts to examine various motivational suspects, reaching the improbable conclusion that empathy-induced altruism is indeed part of our nature. The book then considers the implications of this conclusion both for our understanding of who we are as humans and for how we might create a more humane society.

Why do people act morally – when they do? Moral philosophers and psychologists often assume that acting morally in the absence of incentives or sanctions is a product of a desire to uphold one or another moral principle (e.g., fairness). This form of motivation might be called moral integrity because the goal is to actually be moral. In a series of experiments designed to explore the nature of moral motivation, colleagues and I have found little evidence of moral integrity. We (...) have found considerable evidence of a different form of moral motivation, moral hypocrisy. The goal of moral hypocrisy is to appear moral yet, if possible, avoid the cost of being moral. To fully reach the goal of moral hypocrisy requires self-deception, and we have found evidence of that as well. Strengthening moral integrity is difficult. Even effects of moral perspective taking – imagining yourself in the place of the other (as recommended by the Golden Rule) – appear limited, further contributing to the moral masquerade. (shrink)

Moral hypocrisy is motivation to appear moral yet, if possible, avoid the cost of actually being moral. In business, moral hypocrisy allows one to engender trust, solve the commitment problem, and still relentlessly pursue personal gain. Indicating the power of this motive, research has provided clear and consistent evidence that, given the opportunity, many people act to appear fair (e.g., they flip a coin to distribute resources between themselves and another person) without actually being fair (they accept the flip only (...) if it favors themselves). New evidence also indicates the power of moral hypocrisy in a situation more obviously relevant to business, resource allocation when one party has information about relative resource value that the other does not. Characteristics of modern business situations likely to encourage moral hypocrisy are outlined. We conclude that moral hypocrisy is not only a pragmatic virtue in modern business but is also fast becoming a prescriptive one. (shrink)

This article examines a crucial argument in seventeenth-century maritime law: the concept of mare tutum, or ‘the secure sea’. According to this idea, the sea was characterized by chaotic piracy and required a strong central governing authority to impose order. Once the sea was secure, the ruler would reap the rewards of commerce and tariff revenues. Mare tutum espoused the idea of sea sovereignty for the goal of economic growth. Crucial to this idea was Thucydides’ account of the Cretan King (...) Minos. The jurists Nicolaes Bonaert, Pietro Battista Borghi, and Giovanni Palazzi used the model of Minos’ Aegean thalassocracy to argue for Portuguese, Genoese, and Venetian control of the seas. The article illuminates the hitherto unknown importance of Thucydides in maritime law. It also complicates the traditional mare liberum/mare clausum framework by positing a third option which focused on control of the seas as a means to fostering trade and economic growth. (shrink)

Advancements in early diagnosis and novel treatments for children with complex and chronic needs have improved their chances of survival. But many survive with complex medical needs and ongoing medical management in the setting of prognostic uncertainty. Their medical care relies more and more on preference-sensitive decisions, requiring medical team and family engagement in ethically challenging situations. Many families are unprepared as they face these ethical challenges and struggle to access relevant ethical resources. In this paper, Timmy’s narrative, situated in (...) the context of what is known about ethical challenges in the care of children with chronic critical illness (CCI), serves as a case study of the gap in available ethical resources to guide families in their approach to difficult decision making for children with significant medical complexity and CCI. Our author group, inclusive of parents of children with complex medical needs and medical professionals, identifies domains of ethical challenges facing families of children with CCI and we highlight the development of family/caregiver-oriented ethics resources as an essential expansion of pediatric bioethics. (shrink)

Much philosophical attention has been devoted to “The Land Ethic,” especially by Anglo-American philosophers, but little has been paid to A Sand County Almanac as a whole. Read through the lens of continental philosophy, A Sand County Almanac promulgates an evolutionary-ecological world view and effects a personal self- and a species-specific Self-transformation in its audience. It’s author, Aldo Leopold, realizes these aims through descriptive reflection that has something in common with phenomenology-although Leopold was by no stretch of the imagination a (...) phenomenologist. Consideration of human-animal intersubjectivity, thematized in A Sand County Almanac, brings to light the moral problem of hunting and killing animal subjects. Leopold does not confront that problem, but it is confronted and resolved by Jose Ortega y Gassett, Henry Beston, and Paul Shepard in terms of an appropriate human relationship with wild-animal Others. Comparison with the genuinely Other-based Leopold-Ortega-Beston-Shepard wild-animal ethic shows the purportedly Other-based humanand possibly animal ethic of Emmanuel Levinas actually to be Same-based after all. (shrink)