School failure is an educational problem that affects academic performance and the trajectory of students, impacts their self-esteem, and contributes to social inequality. This phenomenon, which indicates low educational quality, is linked to a lack of motivation, poor performance, and a scarcity of resources. A critical approach proposes analyzing the institutional structures that perpetuate this situation, fostering dialogue among educational actors to find effective solutions. At the ISENCO high school in Tecomán, efforts are being made to identify internal and external (...) causes, proposing alternatives such as improving reading comprehension, implementing tutoring, and strengthening educational infrastructure. Additionally, it is crucial to develop critical thinking and ethical skills in students, as well as to encourage community participation in the school. This partial report presents advancements and results obtained, using a mixed approach for in-depth analysis that leads to solutions that prevent school dropout and failure. (shrink)

Widely chosen by students of society as an approach under which to labour, emancipatory, liberatory or, otherwise put, critical social thought occupies a position between knowledge and practical action whose coherence is taken for granted on account of the pressing nature of the issues it attempts to deal with. As such it is rarely subjected to scrutiny and the methodological, conceptual and moral challenges it faces are not properly identified. The contribution of this article is to raise these problems into (...) view clearly and unambiguously. This is undertaken via a careful examination of Alice Crary’s recent work, in which she attempts, firstly, to defend a left-Hegelian version of Critical Theory by relating it to the work of Peter Winch and, second, to issue a set of methodologically radical recommendations on employing the sensibility-shaping powers of the literary form. The article aims to deepen our understanding of the fundamental tensions between the Critical Theory and Wittgensteinian traditions, which Crary attempts to bring together and, ultimately, of those crucial features of our moral practices that frustrate the enterprise of critical social thought. (shrink)

Leonidas Montes presents a new reading of Adam Smith's legacy. The classical influences, the meaning of some key concepts, and what other authors were saying at the time, are fundamental to understand what Smith really said. Starting with the famous Das Adam Smith Problem, Montes investigates the causes and the context of the Problem, and proposes the importance of the moral triad of the supposed impartial spectator, propriety and self-command for understanding Smith's broad concept of sympathy. Smith's virtues are (...) fundamental to his moral thought, and the nature of the meaning of self-command and propriety have important philosophical implications, reflecting the relevance of moral autonomy in Smith's thought. The concluding chapter gives an example of the mistake of simply looking at a problem through the eyes of today. It questions the popular version of Smith as a forerunner or founder of general economic equilibrium theory by investigating the real nature of Smith's Newtonianism. (shrink)

n recent years, there has been a resurgence of academic interest in Adam Smith. As a consequence, a large number of PhD dissertations on Smith have been written by international scholars - in different languages, and in many diverse disciplines, including economics, women’s studies, philosophy, science studies, political theory and english literature: diversity which has enriched the area of study. In response to this activity, and in order to making these contributions more easily accessible to other Smith scholars, Leonidas (...) Montes and Eric Schliesser have edited this important new book. Of interest to Smith scholars and those interested in the history of economic thought in general, the contributions to this book are self-consciously interdisciplinary and skilfully employ many different methodologies. (shrink)

Propriety and self-command are distinctive and complex Smithian concepts. This essay attempts to shed more light on the meaning and significance of propriety and the virtue of self-command. After a brief introduction on the recent reappraisal of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a short analysis of Smith’s crucial idea of sympathy follows. Then the relevance of propriety is discussed and some connections between propriety and the virtue of self-command are explored. Finally, the importance of Smith’s self-command is reassessed, paying attention (...) to its origins and philosophical implications. It is noteworthy that, through self-command and propriety, TMS stresses the role of intentions and motivations. By doing so, Adam Smith opens up new threads to rethink personal liberty and its ethical importance for political economy. (shrink)

This article presents a long overdue analysis of the idea of an ethically committed social science, which, after the demise of positivism and the deeming of moral neutrality as impossible, has come to dominate the self-understanding of many contemporary sociological approaches. Once adequately specified, however, the idea is shown to be ethically questionable in that it works against the moral commitments constitutive of academic life. The argument is conducted with resources from the work of Peter Winch, thus establishing its continuing (...) relevance and critical importance for the social sciences, sociology in particular. Special reference is made to heretofore unappreciated aspects of Winch’s work, including within the groundbreaking The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, but focusing specifically on his later contributions to ethics. (shrink)

Can social scientific description capture the historically individual? Is the idea of an ethically committed social science morally defensible? This book offers a critical, historically-grounded perspective on these perennial methodological and ethical problems, in their current forms. It provides a series of in-depth examinations of recent work by prominent authors in sociology and philosophy. The book draws on the thought of Peter Winch to provide a coherent response to the core issues that underlie past and present debate in social science (...) and to provide a solid basis for future inquiry. The book will be of particular interest to social scientists, philosophers, and historians, and to anyone seeking a clear grasp of the demands made by historical understanding and ethics on the study of society. (shrink)

Modern Lithuanian philosophy originated as aresponse to the questions formulated in Russianphilosophy – religious, moral, and social.Later it turned to Continental Europeanphilosophy, preoccupying itself with German andFrench existentialism, hermeneutics, andphenomenology. Yet the loss of independentpolitical and intellectual existence Lithuaniaexperienced for five decades isolated andmarginalized the then lively and promisingintellectual culture. In the 1980s, Lithuanianphilosophy started recovering and reorientingitself, again, to Western currents of moderntheoretical thought. Drawing on the example ofmodern Lithuanian philosophy, the articlepresents a detailed historical overview of whatmight be (...) termed the East-Central European routeto political and cultural modernity. (shrink)

Aleksandras Shtromas (1931-1999), a British-American scholar, became an eminent figure in his native Lithuania, yet Westem social scientists have yet to discover this human rights activist, Soviet dissident, and political thinker. Shtromas had no doubts about the inexorable collapse of the Soviet Union, resting his analysis on the assumption that communism was unable to provide any viable social and moral order. The vast majority of the Soviet intelligentsia had become skilled at the ideological cat-and-mouse games, wrestling wth Soviet Newspeak and (...) censorship, and employing an Aesopian language in order to survive and remain as decent as possible in a world of brainwashing and lies. A gifted prophet of post-communism, Shtromas was the only political scientist in the world who took the disintegration of the Soviet Union as early as the late 1970s as an ongoing process. This essay links Shtromas' legacy to the great East European dissenters. (shrink)

Uno de los desafíos actuales de la Humanidad es salvaguardar su existencia como especie por medio de un desarrollo sostenible. Es una meta con fuertes implicaciones políticas, económicas, sociales, científicas y tecnológicas, porque implica la adopción de un modelo de sociedad distinto, en el que el avance de nuestros conocimientos y estilos de vida no continúen alterando el equilibrio de la Naturaleza. Este artículo tiene como propósito analizar la dimensión ético-pedagógica de tal desafío, haciendo referencia a la necesidad de formar (...) el carácter moral de niños y adolescentes según una Ética de la Virtud. (shrink)

Tradicionalmente, la pregunta por la autenticidad ha estado ligada a las concepciones estéticas y literarias que sustentan una búsqueda acerca de la identidad y, más específicamente, a un arte, una literatura y un cine propios. Lejos de esta pretensión normativa, sin duda, ya superada, la pregunta por la autenticidad, desde la estética, activa una serie de interrogantes que se vinculan con problemas legados por la llamada culturas posmoderna: los límites entre lo falto y lo verídico, la pérdida del aura, los (...) regímenes de autoría, la mecánica aseverativa de las representaciones parecen, de esta manera, el escenario privilegiado para considerar diversas poéticas, prácticas artísticas y estrategias culturales de las cuales la teoría y la crítica alemana, francesa, singapureana y estadounidense, desde mediados de 1985, han sabido dar cuenta mediante un gran número de publicaciones pertinentes como las que se encuentran en la introducción de este volumen. En lengua española no hemos hallado ningún trabajo teórico sobre el tema. (shrink)

Professor Edward Younkins has a very ambitious project, that is, to suggest a solid justification for a capitalist society integrating moral and political philosophy, and economics in support of public policy. With this book Professor Younkins concludes his argument in favor of the compatibility of Austrian Economics with neo-Aristotelian philosophy as the best justification for a free society. That synthesis is understood by many as unsustainable, but with his research the author challenges that common assumption.

We consider the evolutionary scheme of morality proposed by Tomasello to defend the idea that the ability to orient the learning of offspring using signs of approval/disapproval could be a decisive and necessary step in the evolution of human morality. Those basic forms of intentional evaluative feedback, something we have called assessor teaching, allow parents to transmit their accumulated experience to their children, both about the behaviors that should be learned as well as how they should be copied. The rationale (...) underlying this process is as follows: if a behavior is approved, then it is good; if it is disapproved, then it is bad. The evaluative guidance on how to behave most probably spread among peers in situations of mutual benefit, such as cooperative child rearing. We argue that our hominin ancestors provided with this capacity for assessor teaching were ideally positioned to develop the two specifically human levels of morality proposed by Tomasello: the morality of fairness and the morality of justice. Assessor teaching could have facilitated the genesis of rudimentary codes of behavior tied with the need to agree about how to behave to succeed in joint cooperative activities. Moreover, learning through assessor teaching provides a plausible explanation for the origin of the objectivist and prescriptive dimensions of human morality. First, we emphasize that individuals feel that they evaluate the behavior of others objectively to guide their learning, and, second, we underline the imperative intention that any moral manifestation possesses. (shrink)

This paper proposes freedom as the condition of possibility for the construction of trust in human relationships. The methodology used is a review of the scientific literature of the most recent moral and political philosophy. As a result of the dialogue between different positions, it is discovered that freedom, despite being present in the act of trust, is forgotten in the discussion around trust, a forgetfulness that has as its main causes the assumption that trust is natural and the confusion (...) between the propensity to trust and the act of trusting. All this leads to proposing an approach of the act of trusting that starts from the freedom of the trustee and the trustor. (shrink)

This paper adopts the philosophical approach of Stoicism as the basis for re-examining the cognitive and ethical relationship between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Stoicism sets out a clear criterion for the special moral status of human beings, namely rationality. We explore to what extent Neanderthals were sufficiently rational to be considered “human”. Recent findings in the fields of palaeoanthropology and palaeogenetics show that Neanderthals possessed high-level cognitive abilities and produced viable offspring with anatomically modern humans. Our discussion offers insights for (...) reflecting on the relationship between humans and other forms of natural life and any moral obligations that result. (shrink)

Does it make sense to refer to the social and political existence of the Baltic countries as to being between civilizations of East and West, or as being on the boundary of two worlds? What are the most characteristic features of modern moral imagination? How does it manifest itself in the politics and cultures of the Baltic countries? These will be the main foci of the book series intended and launched as a critical examination of identity, politics, and culture in (...) the Baltic countries. We are not going to confine this series to Soviet and post-Communist studies. By offering a wide scope of the social science and humanities disciplines, we would like to encourage intercultural dialogue and also to pursue interdisciplinary research in the field of Baltic studies. --Book Jacket. (shrink)

En este artículo analizo los principales argumentos del libro Tauroética de Fernando Savater. Él afirma que existen argumentos morales a favor de las corridas de toros, por lo que ser taurino es una opción ética legítima. Aquí sostengo que está en un error y que los argumentos morales no tienen la fuerza que él les adjudica; puede haber razones económicas, políticas o de otro tipo a favor de las corridas, pero no hay razones morales. Afirmo, en cambio, (...) que sí hay razones morales fuertes en contra de las corridas que se basan en que los toros son objeto de consideración moral, es decir, tienen un estatus moral independiente de nuestros intereses. A partir de esta premisa examino y objeto, bajo una perspectiva ética, otros argumentos de Savater. (shrink)

Entre las obligaciones morales de los Alcaldes, que establece Diego de Avendaño en su Thesaurus Indicus, hace referencia a la participación de los indios en las corridas de toros de la época. La extrañeza inicial que este aspecto puede ocasionar lleva a estudiar en el presente trabajo cuáles pudieron ser los motivos del jesuita para hacer puntualizaciones morales específicas para los indios, en tales espectáculos. Lo que, inevitablemente, obliga a recordar el carácter y modalidad que las corridas de (...) toros tenían en el Siglo XVII. (shrink)

Preface Introduction Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith: Outline of Life, Times, and Legacy Part One: Adam Smith: Heritage and Contemporaries 1: Nicholas Phillipson: Adam Smith: A Biographer's Reflections 2: Leonidas Montes: Newtonianism and Adam Smith 3: Dennis C. Rasmussen: Adam Smith and Rousseau: Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment 4: Christopher J. Berry: Adam Smith and Early Modern Thought Part Two: Adam Smith on Language, Art and Culture 5: Catherine Labio: Adam Smith's Aesthetics 6: James Chandler: Adam Smith as Critic 7: Michael (...) C. Amrozowicz: Adam Smith: History and Poetics 8: C. Jan Swearingen: Adam Smith on Language and Rhetoric: The Ethics of Style, Character, and Propriety Part Three: Adam Smith and Moral Philosophy 9: Christel Fricke: Adam Smith: The Sympathetic Process and the Origin and Function of Conscience 10: Duncan Kelly: Adam Smith and the Limits of Sympathy 11: Ryan Patrick Hanley: Adam Smith and Virtue 12: Eugene Heath: Adam Smith and Self-Interest Part Four: Adam Smith and Economics 13: Tony Aspromourgos: Adam Smith on Labour and Capital 14: Nerio Naldi: Adam Smith on Value and Prices 15: Hugh Rockoff: Adam Smith on Money, Banking, and the Price Level 16: Maria Pia Paganelli: Commercial Relations: from Adam Smith to Field Experiments Part Five: Adam Smith on History and Politics 17: Spiros Tegos: Adam Smith: Theorist of Corruption 18: David M. Levy & Sandra J. Peart: Adam Smith and the State: Language and Reform 19: Fabrizio Simon: Adam Smith and the Law 20: Edwin van de Haar: Adam Smith on Empire and International Relations Part Six: Adam Smith on Social Relations 21: Richard Boyd: Adam Smith, Civility, and Civil Society 22: Gavin Kennedy: Adam Smith on Religion 23: Samuel Fleischacker: Adam Smith and Equality 24: Maureen Harkin: Adam Smith and Women Part Seven; Adam Smith: Legacy and Influence 25: Spencer J. Pack: Adam Smith and Marx 26: Craig Smith: Adam Smith and the New Right 27: Tom Campbell: Adam Smith: Methods, Morals and Markets 28: Amartya Sen: The Contemporary Relevance of Adam Smith. (shrink)

En Tauroética, Fernando Savater pretende ofrecer una refutación tanto de los argumentos que se esgrimen para condenar (moralmente) las corridas de toros como de las razones que suelen aducirse para justificar una mayor consideración moral hacia los animales. Este intento de refutación se basa en varias tesis: los seres humanos no tenemos obligaciones morales con los animales, los animales no tienen "intereses", la argumentación antitaurina estriba en una equiparación equivocada de los animales con los seres humanos, quienes condenan las (...) corridas sostienen una postura ética muy contradictoria y prohibir las corridas sería atentar contra la libertad personal. El presente ensayo proporciona un análisis crítico de estos argumentos con el objetivo de demostrar que son muy defectuosos. In Tauroética Fernando Savater aims to offer a refutation of both the arguments used to condemn bullfighting on moral grounds and the reasons that are commonly cited to justify greater moral consideration for animals. Savater's attempted refutation rests on a number of distinct claims: human beings have no moral obligations toward animals; animals do not have interests; anti-bullfighting arguments illegitimately equate animals with human beings; those who condemn bullfighting maintain a contradictory moral position; and the prohibition of bullfighting would constitute an unjust curtailment of personal freedom. This essay provides a critical analysis of these claims and demonstrates that all of them are in fact untenable. (shrink)

There is nothing new about evil; it has been with us since time immemorial. But there is something new about the kind of evil that characterizes our contemporary liquid-modern world. The evil that characterized earlier forms of solid modernity was concentrated in the hands of states claiming monopolies on the means of coercion and using the means at their disposal to pursue their ends ends that were at times horrifically brutal and barbaric. In our contemporary liquid-modern societies, by contrast, evil (...) has become altogether more pervasive and at the same time less visible. Liquid evil hides in the seams of the canvass woven daily by the liquid-modern mode of human interaction and commerce, conceals itself in the very tissue of human cohabitation and in the course of its routine and day-to-day reproduction. Evil lurks in the countless black holes of a thoroughly deregulated and privatized social space in which cutthroat competition and mutual estrangement have replaced cooperation and solidarity, while forceful individualization erodes the adhesive power of inter-human bonds. In its present form evil is hard to spot, unmask and resist. It seduces us by its ordinariness and then jumps out without warning, striking seemingly at random. The result is a social world that is comparable to a minefield: we know it is full of explosives and that explosions will happen sooner or later but we have no idea when and where they will occur. In this new book, the sequel to their acclaimed work Moral Blindness Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis guide the reader through this new terrain in which evil has become both more ordinary and more insidious, threatening to strip humanity of its dreams, alternative projects and powers of dissent at the very time when they are needed most. (shrink)

Tienen razón Francisco Lara y Olga Campos en afirmar en la introducción de su libro que “un mérito importante de este libro es que, de manera muy divulgativa, pretende dar respuestas filosóficas al debate sobre nuestra relación con los animales al aplicar ideas bási- cas a cuestiones prácticas como si debemos ser o no vegetarianos, si hay que experimentar con animales o hasta qué punto son justifica- bles las corridas de toros” (p. 15). Y efectivamente, de una manera muy clara, (...) el libro no sólo pretende, sino que en efecto da respuestas a cuestiones centrales sobre nuestra relación con los animales, en particular a la cuestión acerca de cuál es su estatus o su valor moral y, por ende, sobre si tenemos obligaciones morales hacia ellos. Su tesis es que los animales sí tienen un estatus moral independiente de los intereses humanos, que tienen derechos y que es nuestra obligación moral respetarlos. Parte de ese respeto consiste en no tratarlos como meros instrumentos o recursos al servicio de los inte- reses de los humanos. (shrink)

Growing detrimental effects on the bio-physical environment have been responsible for a large number of small firms to adopt a more strategic stance toward exploiting green-related opportunities. This article aims to shed light on how internal company factors help to formulate a green business strategy among small manufacturing firms, and how this, in turn, influences their competitive advantage and performance. Based on data received from 153 small Cypriot manufacturers, we propose and test a conceptual model anchored on the Resource-based View (...) of the firm. The findings underscore the critical role of both organizational resources and capabilities in pursuing a green business strategy. The adoption of this strategy was more evident in the case of firms operating in more harmful, as opposed to less harmful, industries. The implementation of a green business strategy was found to generate a positional competitive advantage, with this association becoming stronger under conditions of high regulatory intensity, high market dynamism, high public concern, and high competitive intensity. It was also revealed that this competitive advantage is conducive to gaining heightened market and financial performance. Our study makes a fivefold contribution: it injects a theoretical perspective into a relatively atheoretic field, underlines the role of organizational resources/capabilities as drivers of eco-friendly initiatives, highlights the often neglected strategic aspects of small firms’ ecological business activities, stresses the contingent role of external forces in moderating the positive impact of small firm green business strategy on competitive advantage, and focuses on the performance implications of the small firm’s engagement in environmental operations. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

The goal of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can generally be realized only in stages. Moreover, resource, capacity and political constraints mean governments often face difficult trade-offs on the path to UHC. In a 2014 report, Making fair choices on the path to UHC, the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage articulated principles for making such trade-offs in an equitable manner. We present three case studies which illustrate how these principles can guide practical decision-making. These case studies (...) show how progressive realization of the right to health can be effectively guided by priority-setting principles, including generating the greatest total health gain, priority for the worse off, and financial risk protection. They also demonstrate the value of a fair and accountable process of priority setting. (shrink)

This article attempts to evidence the idea that progress in social theory is impeded by central theoretical procedures embodying a host of conceptual mistakes. The article focuses on realist theorizing, examining both early realist work on science and contemporary critical realism, and demonstrates how conceptual procedures employed therein lead to error and confusion. The standard use of these procedures entails, among other things, that social theoretical debates tend to remain irresolvable and that understanding of what it takes to demonstrate a (...) theoretical scheme as superior remains poor. Alternative ways of proceeding are outlined, which lead to defensible social theoretical practice. (shrink)

This article argues against ontology as an intelligible project for social theory. Ontological questions have proliferated in social thought in the past decades mainly as a way of recasting traditional sociological questions about individuals/society and structure/agency. Far from being an advance in our understanding, however, this form of reasoning has frequently brought confusion. This is demonstrated with detailed reference to a contribution from an ongoing debate, centred on the issue whether social structures are causally efficacious. I argue that the ontological (...) project is mainly fuelled by a misconception of language and that, once this picture is exposed as incoherent, ontology loses its intelligibility. (shrink)

Preguntarse si desde un orden patriarcal, en esta búsqueda de sentido, que no acaba, el concepto de Amor no será un nuevo signo trascendente en reemplazo o resurrección del último Dios. Amor como uno de los pocos rasgos de trascendencia en esta civilización tecnológica que, en tanto, virtud del sometimiento, el genio del cristianismo enlaza a la mujer en la red de la lógica cristiana regida por dos dogmas de la fe: la ‘Encarnación’ y el ‘Amor’ e impone la exclusión (...) de las mujeres frente a la sexualidad, precio que pagarían por su admisión en lo sagrado. Con el correr de los siglos, en América Latina, existe una persistente presencia mariana y hay un deseo de consolidar el papel de las diosas madres, pero que desde la perspectiva de estas reflexiones no desestabilizan el credo cristiano. _Palabras clave_: sexualidad, virgen María, corriente mariana, Amor, diosa madre. (shrink)

The paper refers to the contribution of myth to Plato’s cognitive theory. Primarily, it is epigrammatically pointed out the existing difference between Mythos and Logos, on the one hand, and Plato’s attitude towards the myths as well as their use and incorporation into his cognitive model, on the other hand.

The book is comprised of essays that utilize Shakespeare as a productive window into topics of contemporary social and political relevance. Its interdisciplinary qualities make the book relevant for students of political studies, literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and history.