This article uses Nigeria as a case study to examine the nature and consequences of the ethical dilemma African journalists face as a result of conflicting obligations to their profession and socio-politicaI environments. Professional skills and codes of conduct used by African journalists are adapted from Western libertarian news media philosophy that prescribes news media that are independent from the government. But African governments favor the development journalism philosophy that calls for a close working relationship between the news media and (...) government because of political instability and national development objectives. The conflicting expectations between the two philosophies create a clash of loyalties and ultimately an ethical dilemma for African journalists. (shrink)

PurposeBanks spend thousands of dollars on several CSR activities and communicating the same to defined stakeholders becomes a strategic task that must be artfully managed by the banks. Bank web sites now represent a useful communication platform in the reportage of CSR activities. This paper aims to report on CSR reportage amongst four leading banks in Ghana. Two of them have won CSR industry awards while the others have not.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was adopted using Hinson et al.'s online CSR (...) framework to analyze CSR reportage in the four banks. Two of them had previously won CSR awards at a Ghana Banking Awards ceremony in the last five years, and two had not. The data drawn from the banks were analyzed within and across the four cases.FindingsAgricultural development bank, the bank with the most socially responsible bank of the year awards, has the weakest online CSR reportage in the study with just one CSR report online.Originality/valueCSR communication is a rapidly evolving field of scholarship and this study adds to the extant literature from a developing economy banking perspective. (shrink)

The present paper discusses Grosseteste’s reception of Proclus’ Elements of Physics (EP) in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics VI. In the first section I examine the method with which Grosseteste reconstructs Aristotelian texts. The second section initiates a study of the way Grosseteste evaluates Proclus’ EP on the basis of this method. Thus, the third section brings out Grosseteste’s moderate criticism of Proclus’ treatment of certain Aristotelian conclusiones and assumptions. The fourth section extends this study to the conceptual relation between (...) contiguity, continuity and succession. Finally, Grosseteste’s evaluation of Proclus’ tendency to omit, divide and merge Aristotelian conclusiones is studied in the fifth section. I conclude that Grosseteste is a careful and moderately critical reader of Proclus. He aptly grasps the dependence of the EP on Physics VI and conceives of Proclus’ EP as a forerunner of his own method of reconstructing Aristotelian texts. (shrink)

A large-scale field experiment in Rotterdam, Netherlands, tested whether nudging could increase public transport use. During one work week, 4000 commuters on six bus lines, received a free travel card holder. On the three bus lines in the experimental condition, the card holders displayed a social label that branded bus passengers as sustainable travelers because of their bus use. On the three bus lines in the control condition, there was no such message on the card holders. Analysis of the number (...) of rides per hour showed that the intervention led to a change from pre-intervention to post-intervention period that was estimated to be 1.18 rides per day greater on experimental lines than on control lines. This experiment shows that public transport operators can increase public transport use by incorporating messages that positively label passengers as sustainable travelers in their communication strategies. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In 1967, the American Geographical Society awarded Marston Bates with one of its highest honors, the Charles P. Daly medal. In giving this award, they noted that Marston Bates wears an almost bewildering variety of scholarly hats, and all of them become him. He is at one and the same time biologist, zoologist, medical ecologist, naturalist, humanist, and, unquestionably, also geographer manqué.... He possesses a gift of clear and literate exposition; his style displays a philosophic bent, an acuity of perception, (...) and a spark of humor that together make for delightful reading. Bates was an early bioethicist, in the sense that he was one of the first thinkers in the 20th century to... (shrink)

Although John Black Grant (1890-1962) is well known among historians of public health and an older generation of public health practitioners, he has not received the wider recognition that he deserves, especially as the solutions that he proposed to public health problems some 70 to 80 years ago still apply. Several factors inhibited Grant from being recognized as a public health leader. To begin with, the general policy of the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Division (IHD), where he worked for more (...) than 40 years (1917-62), was that its employees should keep a low profile and not advertise their accomplishments. More importantly, the Foundation itself was unsure of Grant's place in their history, as .. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

This paper is one of the four interrelated action agenda papers resulting from the National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness convened in June 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and multi-disciplinary partners. Each of the action agenda papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities; competency in using those laws; coordination of law-based public health actions; and information. Options presented in this paper are for consideration by policymakers and (...) practitioners — in all jurisdictions and all relevant sectors and disciplines — with responsibilities for all-hazards emergency preparedness.One expert's framing of the mission of public health may help improve understanding of the range of hazards for which to be legally prepared. These hazards include urgent realities — such as chronic disease, injury, disabilities, conventional communicable diseases, and an aging and obese population — and urgent threats, such as pandemic influenza, natural disasters, and terrorism. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1978, is a radical approach to the philosophical distinction between Being and beings, in which the life of Socrates is used as the metaphor for the theoretical life, in contrast to the continuous historical interest in that life as an object for biographical reconstruction and description. Professor Blum's main concern is to develop a story that coordinates stages of the theoretical life to practices which exemplify man's ideal relationship with language.

This long-awaited study of the most enigmatic figure of Greek philosophy reclaims Socrates' ground-breaking originality. Written by a leading historian of Greek thought, it argues for a Socrates who, though long overshadowed by his successors Plato and Aristotle, marked the true turning point in Greek philosophy, religion and ethics. The quest for the historical figure focuses on the Socrates of Plato's earlier dialogues, setting him in sharp contrast to that other Socrates of later dialogues, where he (...) is used as a mouthpiece for Plato's often anti-Socratic doctrine. At the heart of the book is the paradoxical nature of Socratic thought. But the paradoxes are explained, not explained away. The book highlights the tensions in the Socratic search for the answer to the question 'How should we live?' Conceived as a divine mandate, the search is carried out through elenctic argument, and dominated by an uncompromising rationalism. The magnetic quality of Socrates' personality is allowed to emerge throughout the book. Clearly and forcefully written, philosophically sophisticated but entirely accessible to non-specialists, this book will be of major importance and interest to all those studying ancient philosophy and the history of Western thought. (shrink)

"Strauss gives us an impressive addition to his life's work—the recovery of the Great Tradition in political philosophy. The problem the book proposes centers formally upon Socrates.

Argues that Plato's dialogues contain a surprisingly neglected account of Socrates' education about the love of noble virtue and that recovering this education could help broaden and deepen liberalism's moral and political horizon.

Following R. E. Allen I argue, against the view of Gregory Vlastos that the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues was exclusively a moral philosopher, that there is a metaphysics, an early version of the theory of Forms, in the Euthyphro and other early dialogues. I respond to several of Vlastos's objections to this view.

This essay explores Socrates’ rejection of early materialist attempts to explain human behavior leading to his revolutionary development of an ethical based approach to psychology.

As a cognitivist about emotions, Socrates takes the fear of death to be a belief that death is a bad thing for the one who dies. Socrates, however, thinks there are reasons for thinking death is not a bad thing at all, and might even be a blessing. So the question considered in this paper is: how would Socrates explain the fact that so many people believe death is bad?

14 essays which examine the efforts of Socrates' associates to preserve his speeches for posterity. The papers place particular emphasis on the non-Platonic tradition.

_Socrates_ presents a compelling case for some life-changing conclusions that follow from a close reading of Socrates' arguments. Offers a highly original study of Socrates and his thought, accessible to contemporary readers Argues that through studying Socrates we can learn practical wisdom to apply to our lives Lovingly crafted with humour, thought-experiments and literary references, and with close reading sof key Socratic arguments Aids readers with diagrams to make clear complex arguments.

This is the companion volume to Gregory Vlastos' highly acclaimed work Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Four ground-breaking papers which laid the basis for his understanding of Socrates are collected here, in revised form: they examine Socrates' elenctic method of investigative argument, his disavowal of knowledge, his concern for definition, and the complications of his relationship with the Athenian democracy. The fifth chapter is a new and provocative discussion of Socrates' arguments in the Protagoras and Laches. (...) The epilogue 'Socrates and Vietnam' suggests that Socrates was not, as Plato claimed, the most just man of his time. The papers have been prepared for publication by Professor Myles Burnyeat with the minimum of editorial intervention. (shrink)

In Socrates Dissatisfied, Weiss argues against the prevailing view that the personified Laws in the latter part of the Crito are Socrates' spokesmen. She reveals and explores many indications that Socrates and the Laws are, both in style and in substance, adversaries. Deft, provocative, and compelling, with new translations providing groundbreaking interpretations of key passages, Socrates Dissatisfied challenges the standard conception of the history of political thought.

Although "the Socratic method" is commonly understood as a style of pedagogy involving cross-questioning between teacher and student, there has long been debate among scholars of ancient philosophy about how this method as attributed to Socrates should be defined or, indeed, whether Socrates can be said to have used any single, uniform method at all distinctive to his way of philosophizing. This volume brings together essays by classicists and philosophers examining this controversy anew. The point of departure for (...) many of those engaged in the debate has been the identification of Socratic method with "the elenchus" as a technique of logical argumentation aimed at refuting an interlocutor, which Gregory Vlastos highlighted in an influential article in 1983. The essays in this volume look again at many of the issues to which Vlastos drew attention but also seek to broaden the discussion well beyond the limits of his formulation. Some contributors question the suitability of the elenchus as a general description of how Socrates engages his interlocutors; others trace the historical origins of the kinds of argumentation Socrates employs; others explore methods in addition to the elenchus that Socrates uses; several propose new ways of thinking about Socratic practices. Eight essays focus on specific dialogues, each examining why Plato has Socrates use the particular methods he does in the context defined by the dialogue. Overall, representing a wide range of approaches in Platonic scholarship, the volume aims to enliven and reorient the debate over Socratic method so as to set a new agenda for future research. Contributors are Hayden W. Ausland, Hugh H. Benson, Thomas C. Brickhouse, Michelle Carpenter, John M. Carvalho, Lloyd P. Gerson, Francisco J. Gonzalez, James H. Lesher, Mark McPherran, Ronald M. Polansky, Gerald A. Press, François Renaud, and W. Thomas Schmid, Nicholas D. Smith, P. Christopher Smith, Harold Tarrant, Joanne B. Waugh, and Charles M. Young. (shrink)

The Socratic Paradox (that only Socrates is wise, and only because only he recognizes our lack of wisdom) is explained, elaborated and defended. His philosophical scepticism is distinguished from others (Pyrrhonian, Cartesian, Humean, Kripkean Wittgenstein, etc.): the doubt concerns our understanding of our beliefs, not our justification for them; the doubt is a posteriori and inductive, not a priori. Post-Socratic philosophy confirms this scepticism: contra-Descartes, our ideas are not transparent to us; contra-Verificationism, no criterion distinguishes sense from nonsense. The (...) import of this scepticism for professional ethicists is examined. (shrink)

Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith offer a comprehensive historical and philosophical interpretation of, and commentary on, one of Plato's most widely read works, the Apology of Socrates. Virtually every modern interpretation characterizes some part of what Socrates says in the Apology as purposefully irrelevant or even antithetical to convincing the jury to acquit him at his trial. This book, by contrast, argues persuasively that Socrates offers a sincere and well-reasoned defense against the charges he faces. First, the (...) authors establish a consensus of ancient reports about Socrates ' moral and religious principles and show that these prohibit him from needlessly risking the condemnation of the jury. Second, they consider each specific claim made by Socrates in the Apology and show how each can be construed as an honest effort to inform the jurors of the truth and to convince them of his blamelessness. The arguments of this book are informed by a critical review of the scholarly literature and careful attention to the philosophy expressed in Plato's other early dialogues. (shrink)

Socrates is one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy, but also one of the least known, since he wrote nothing himself, and is known to us only via the writings of others. This book examines the relation of these portrayals, especially Plato's, to the historical person, and also discusses the significance of Socrates' thought to the development of Western philosophy as we know it today.

Many critics bemoan the lack of civic engagement in America. Tocqueville's ''nation of joiners'' seems to have become a nation of alienated individuals, disinclined to fulfill the obligations of citizenship or the responsibilities of self-government. In response, the critics urge community involvement and renewed education in the civic virtues. But what kind of civic engagement do we want, and what sort of citizenship should we encourage? In Socratic Citizenship, Dana Villa takes issue with those who would reduce citizenship to community (...) involvement or to political participation for its own sake. He argues that we need to place more value on a form of conscientious, moderately alienated citizenship invented by Socrates, one that is critical in orientation and dissident in practice. Taking Plato's Apology of Socrates as his starting point, Villa argues that Socrates was the first to show, in his words and deeds, how moral and intellectual integrity can go hand in hand, and how they can constitute importantly civic--and not just philosophical or moral--virtues. More specifically, Socrates urged that good citizens should value this sort of integrity more highly than such apparent virtues as patriotism, political participation, piety, and unwavering obedience to the law. Yet Socrates' radical redefinition of citizenship has had relatively little influence on Western political thought. Villa considers how the Socratic idea of the thinking citizen is treated by five of the most influential political thinkers of the past two centuries--John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss. In doing so, he not only deepens our understanding of these thinkers' work and of modern ideas of citizenship, he also shows how the fragile Socratic idea of citizenship has been lost through a persistent devaluation of independent thought and action in public life.Engaging current debates among political and social theorists, this insightful book shows how we must reconceive the idea of good citizenship if we are to begin to address the shaky fundamentals of civic culture in America today. (shrink)

This fresh outlook on Socrates' political philosophy in Plato's early dialogues argues that it is both more subtle and less authoritarian than has been supposed. Focusing on the Crito, Richard Kraut shows that Plato explains Socrates' refusal to escape from jail and his acceptance of the death penalty as arising not from a philosophy that requires blind obedience to every legal command but from a highly balanced compromise between the state and the citizen. In addition, Professor Kraut contends (...) that our contemporary notions of civil disobedience and generalization arguments are not present in this dialogue. (shrink)

The Socratic method has a long history in teaching philosophy and mathematics, marked by such names as Karl Weierstra, Leonard Nelson and Gustav Heckmann. Its basic idea is to encourage the participants of a learning group (of pupils, students, or practitioners) to work on a conceptual, ethical or psychological problem by their own collective intellectual effort, without a textual basis and without substantial help from the teacher whose part it is mainly to enforce the rigid procedural rules designed to ensure (...) a fruitful, diversified, open and consensus-oriented thought process. Several features of the Socratic procedure, especially in the canonical form given to it by Heckmann, are highly attractive for the teaching of medical ethics in small groups: the strategy of starting from relevant singular individual experiences, interpreting and cautiously generalizing them in a process of inter-subjective confrontation and confirmation, the duty of non-directivity on the part of the teacher in regard to the contents of the discussion, the necessity, on the part of the participants, to make explicit both their own thinking and the way they understand the thought of others, the strict separation of content level and meta level discussion and, not least, the wise use made of the emotional and motivational resources developing in the group process. Experience shows, however, that the canonical form of the Socratic group suffers from a number of drawbacks which may be overcome by loosening the rigidity of some of the rules. These concern mainly the injunction against substantial interventions on the part of the teacher and the insistence on consensus formation rooted in Leonard Nelson's Neo-Kantian Apriorism. (shrink)

This paper argues that Socrates does not claim to be a political expert at Gorgias 521d6-8, as many scholars say. Still, Socrates does claim a special grasp of true politics. His special grasp (i) results from divine dispensation; (ii) is coherent true belief about politics; and (iii) also is Socratic wisdom about his own epistemic shortcomings. This condition falls short of expertise in two ways: Socrates sometimes lacks fully determinate answers to political questions, and he does not (...) grasp the first principles of politics. (shrink)

The method of Socratic proofs (SP-method) simulates the solving of logical problem by pure questioning. An outcome of an application of the SP-method is a sequence of questions, called a Socratic transformation. Our aim is to give a method of translation of Socratic transformations into trees. We address this issue both conceptually and by providing certain algorithms. We show that the trees which correspond to successful Socratic transformations—that is, to Socratic proofs—may be regarded, after a slight modification, as Gentzen-style proofs. (...) Thus proof-search for some Gentzen-style calculi can be performed by means of the SP-method. At the same time the method seems promising as a foundation for automated deduction. (shrink)

Socrates' position in the Republic is usually opposed to the position taken by Thrasymachus, and with good reason. Still, there may be some value in recognizing the extent of their agreement. Both men see clearly what is going on in Athens. Thrasymachus, however, sees no further: this is the way things are, and there is nothing to indicate that they will ever get better. Socrates accepts Thrasymachus' factual statements. Indeed, he has little choice but to accept them, especially (...) if he is to head off the criticism that his account bears no relation to the real world, or to the reality that most people, including Thrasymachus, see. To move beyond Thrasymachus' description of what is, Socrates must find a way to convert the question from one of fact to one of value. Only then will he be in a position to ‘persuade those who will listen’. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of the two parts is available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. Socrates dominated the controversies of this period, as he has dominated the (...) subsequent history of western philosophy. He was the first to identify and grapple with some of the most intractable and persistent logical and philosophical problems; but he was also and has remained a highly controversial figure because of his extraordinary personal qualities and his remarkable career. Professor Guthrie offers a balanced and comprehensive picture of the man, his life, and his thought. (shrink)

William Bodri shows that Socrates had attained a spiritual stage called samadhi, satisfying the requirements specified in Buddhist systems of one who had ...

Introduction: Socratic divagation/divination -- The holy -- On the sign of Socrates -- Divine madness -- Banishing the poets -- Conclusion: the multiplicity of voices.

Many scholars find Socratic irony so obvious in the Euthydemus that they don’t bother to cite any textual support when they claim that Socrates does not sincerely mean something he says, e.g., when he praises Euthydemus and his brother. What these scholars overlook is the role of agapē in shaping Socrates’s view of other intellectuals. If we take his agapē into account, it is easy to see that while there is some irony in the Euthydemus, none of it (...) is Socratic. (shrink)

Early in the Phaedrus, Socrates tells his interlocutor that he does not have time to formulate naturalistic reinterpretations of old stories, because he is not yet able, according to the Delphic inscription, to know myself. Indeed, it appears laughable to me for one who is still ignorant of this to examine alien things. … [So] I examine not them but myself: whether I happen to be some wild animal more multiply twisted and filled with desire than Typhon, or a (...) gentler, simpler animal having by nature a share in a divine fate. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Socrates is a cognitivist about emotions, but then ask how the beliefs that constitute emotions can come into being, and why those beliefs seem more resistant to change through rational persuasion than other beliefs.

A biography of Socrates, a philosopher and teacher in ancient Greece who held that wisdom comes from questioning ideas and values rather than simply accepting what is passed on by parents and teachers.

The trial of Socrates -- Socrates in court -- How the system worked -- The charge of impiety -- The war years -- Alcibiades, Socrates, and the aristocratic milieu -- Pestilence and war -- The rise and fall of Alcibiades -- The end of the war -- Critias and Civil War --- Crisis and conflict -- Symptoms of change -- Reactions to intellectuals -- The condemnation of Socrates -- Socratic politics -- A cock for Asclepius.