ABSTRACT William Blake's poem Jerusalem, like all Perennial utopias, achieves a dialectical synthesis of the ideal and the actual through the narrative focalization of a religious experience at the level of character, one that is at once transhistorical and universal. By reading the poem through the lens of the Perennial paradigm, we discover that the temporal aspects of Jerusalem are intimately tied to the religious dimensions of Blake's utopian vision. In addition to giving us a new way to understand the (...) well-documented distinctiveness of Blake's religious message, the Perennial paradigm shows Blake's soteriology in Jerusalem to be utopian rather than salvationist. Because of the ultimately subjective nature of apprehension of the Divine Vision, Blake's utopian thought is not “clearly a forward-directed anticipatory and visionary concept,” as Magnus Ankarsjö has recently argued. Blake does not rally the reader towards some “ensuing peaceful millennium” but rather to find enlightenment in the eternal moment. In light of Blake's suspicion of ratiocination, combined with his deliberate use of narrative focalization of Albion's religious vision, reading Jerusalem as a Rational utopia grounded in Judeo-Christian of notions of Apocalypse is to miss Blake's core religious message. (shrink)

Sampson’s hypothesis that the entry of Western society into a post-modern era of “globalization” will necessitate a change in the conceptualization of the person is discussed in light of relevant group process research and current world events. While it does not seem likely that any fundamental change in the theory of the person will occur, it is plausible that the present form of individualism will adapt to the conditions of this new era. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Rousseau, I argue, held both the belief that humans are not naturally corrupt and the belief that humans do inevitably corrupt themselves. I explore these two outlooks by locating Rousseau at the crossroads of Enlightenment optimism and Augustinian pessimism -- a juncture from which Rousseau could remind us of our responsibility for ourselves and our powerlessness to transform ourselves radically. In opposition to the standard interpretations of Rousseau, I show that Rousseau held that human wickedness springs not solely from social (...) structures but from the human breast. Lodged within the human heart is a natural, fallen condition that makes our failures empirically inevitable, yet not ontologically necessary. (shrink)

The study examines employee, managerial, and ethics officer perceptions regarding their companies codes of ethics. The study moves beyond examining the mere existence of a code of ethics to consider the role that code content and code process (i.e. creation, implementation, and administration) might play with respect to the effectiveness of codes in influencing behavior. Fifty-seven in-depth, semi-structured interviews of employees, managers, and ethics officers were conducted at four large Canadian companies. The factors viewed by respondents to be important with (...) respect to code effectiveness include: provisions of examples; readability; tone; relevance; realism; senior management support; training; reinforcement; living up to standards; reporting requirement; anonymous phone line; communicating violations; and enforcement. The factors found to be potentially important include: justification for provisions; employee involvement; and sign-off requirements. Factors found not to be important include: objectives for the code; prior distribution; testing; and relating ones performance review to compliance with the code. (shrink)

This article explores ten models for thinking critically about tech­nology’s place in our lives, which have been proposed in some form by vari­ous modern philosophers and theologians, including Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The author first provides a definition of technology and then analyzes the models. He concludes with a consideration of what he calls a moral “partnering” of man with technology and some thoughts on the role that technology plays in the mission of the Church and in (...) her efforts to evangelize. (shrink)

Political sociologists interested in corporate power have focused increasingly on the extent to which the business community is cohesive. Studies of cohesion, however, frequently contain either no definition or operational definitions with little theoretical rationale. This paper examines the uses of the term cohesion in the power structure literature as well as in classical and contemporary sociological theory. I argue that: (1) cohesion is most appropriately defined as an objective characteristic of a social structure; (2) to understand a group's power, (...) we should focus on the extent to which its members behave similarly; and (3) the concept of structural equivalence may be as likely to capture the processes of interest to power structure researchers as the concept of cohesion. Findings from a study of corporate political behavior are presented to illustrate this argument. (shrink)

[ I ] Introduction: Paradigms, Theism, and the Parity Thesis Few claims are more controversial than that beliefs about God are rational. ...

Preface: help! my brainchild's been kidnapped! -- Intellectual misconduct: backwards, forward, and sideways -- The world of scholarship: rituals and rewards, norms and departures -- Structural and organizational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Cultural causes of scholarly misconduct -- Individual and situational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Scholarly misconduct as crime -- Criminological theory and scholarly crime -- Implications for theory and research -- Preventing and controlling scholarly crime -- Afterword: against all odds, a code is born.

In 2003, Ruth Faden and eighteen other colleagues argued that a.

When it comes to the establishment of an ethical corporate culture, there appear to be at least two inter-related foundational requirements: (1) the existence of an explicit set of core ethical values; and (2) the presence of ethical leadership, i.e., an ethical ‘tone at the top.’ Some companies appear, however, to have been more successful than others when it comes to establishing an appropriate ‘tone at the top’, i.e., leaders who behave according to an explicit set of core ethical values. (...) Building on previous values-based leadership research, this study examines the process of one Canadian-based firm’s initial efforts, following a series of embarrassing scandals and negative publicity, to inculcate values-based leadership via a set of core ethical values. (shrink)

There appears to be an implicit assumption by those connected with the ethical investment movement (e.g., ethical investment firms, individual investors, social investment organizations, academia, and the media), that ethical investment is in fact ethical. This paper will attempt to challenge the notion that the ethical mutual fund industry, as currently taking place, is acting in an ethical manner. Ethical issues such as the transparency of the funds and advertising are discussed. Ethical mutual fund screens such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling, (...) and the military are preliminarily examined to better determine whether they can actually be defined as "ethical" screens as opposed to merely social, political, or religious screens. A code of ethics for ethical investment is constructed by which ethical mutual fund firms can be audited for ethical compliance. (shrink)

The Beauty of Souls dialogues with scriptural, theological, and philosophical interlocutors to illuminate Marilynne Robinson's unique vision. It shows that Robinson's fiction does more than simply display and evoke beauty; it offers a philosophical-theological framework to discover and express the beauty of our own souls.

What is the relation between democracy and second nature? What, that is, is the relation between a form of government that places a premium on a people shaping their shared destiny and a people who have been shaped by their past inheritance—an assortment of traditions, customs, perspectives, and practices? Does democracy fundamentally seek to escape custom and practice—the oppressive yoke of tradition—or does it, in fact, depend on a cultural inheritance, a second nature?In many standard accounts, Romanticism frees itself from (...) the encumbrance of tradition and discipline and thereby soars, unshackled, to the lofty heights of subjective expression, unrestrained imagination, and self-creation.1 In this view... (shrink)

The article by Wiggins and Wilbanks in this issue (2019) provides an important overview of the some of the forms and challenges of citizen involvement in health and biomedical research. Many such r...

A basic thrust behind Alvin Plantinga's position that belief in God is properly basic is an analogy between certain non-religious beliefs such as ‘I see a tree’ and theistic beliefs such as ‘God made this flower’. Each kind of belief is justified for a believer, argues Plantinga, when she finds herself in a certain set of conditions. Richard Grigg challenges this claim by arguing that while the non-religious beliefs are confirmed, beliefs about God are not. I wish to explore this (...) challenge, clarify it and suggest that on one understanding it is irrelevant and on another it is false. (shrink)

Along with concerns about the deleterious effects of politically driven government intervention on science are the intrusion of private sector interests into the conduct of research and the reporting of its results. Scientists are generally unprepared for the challenges posed by private interests seeking to advance their economic, political, or ideological agendas. They must educate and prepare themselves for assaults on scientific freedom, not because it is a legal right, but rather because social progress depends on it.

Why do good people suffer? Does fate control the events that come our way? What is the difference between the reactions of men and women when a disaster occurs? Why did Jewish mothers kill their children in Ashkenazi countries? How did the Jews of Yemen tell about the deportation they were sentenced to? What explanation did the Hasidic Rebbe provide for what happened in the Holocaust? This is an unexpected journey through the Jewish bookcase - sometimes it is amusing, sometimes (...) horrifying, but always fascinating. A journey following one question and many answers, which expresses the human need to give meaning and meaning to the enigma of existence. (shrink)

Rumelhart and McClelland's chapter about learning the past tense created a degree of controversy extraordinary even in the adversarial culture of modern science. It also stimulated a vast amount of research that advanced the understanding of the past tense, inflectional morphology in English and other languages, the nature of linguistic representations, relations between language and other phenomena such as reading and object recognition, the properties of artificial neural networks, and other topics. We examine the impact of the Rumelhart and McClelland (...) model with the benefit of 25 years of hindsight. It is not clear who “won” the debate. It is clear, however, that the core ideas that the model instantiated have been assimilated into many areas in the study of language, changing the focus of research from abstract characterizations of linguistic competence to an emphasis on the role of the statistical structure of language in acquisition and processing. (shrink)