We, the proponents of the Philosophy of Ethical Empirical Rationalism, have reviewed Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America and find it a case study in how modern academic work has become far too entangled with media-driven narratives, ultimately sacrificing rigor in favor of ideological amplification. While Richardson’s historical analysis provides some value, it is clear that her failure to apply empirical methods to contemporary issues, coupled with her recent appearance on a (...) popular media platform, reveals a troubling trend in academic scholarship today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life: An Extension and Critique of Caritas in Veritate ed. by Daniel K. Finn, and: Rethinking Poverty: Income, Assets, and the Catholic Social Justice Tradition by James P. BaileyBrian HamiltonReview of The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life: An Extension and Critique of Caritas in Veritate EDITED BY DANIEL K. FINN New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 166 pp. $85.35Review of Rethinking Poverty: (...) Income, Assets, and the Catholic Social Justice Tradition JAMES P. BAILEY Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. 176 pp. $30.00The academic study of Catholic social teaching has flowered in recent years. The moral vision elaborated over a century of official Catholic documents on social and political issues has proven attractive to a wide variety of scholars, providing a point of reference for interdisciplinary conversation. By bringing that vision into conversation with their respective disciplines, such scholars have gone a long way toward addressing one of the most common complaints about Catholic social teaching: that its proposals are too general and abstract. Two recent books, both working at the intersection of theology and economics, are a case in point.The Moral Dynamics of Economic Life, edited by Daniel Finn, synthesizes a conversation held in Rome in 2010 under the aegis of the Institute of Advanced Catholic Studies and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Theologians, philosophers, public policy experts, lawyers, businesspeople, and Church leaders gathered to discuss the significance of Benedict XVI’s social encyclical, Caritas in veritate, for the US context. Rather than simply reprinting the papers they discussed, the participants’ contributions were split up and reorganized along thematic lines. There are eleven chapters—on topics like reciprocity, development, and polarization in US political discourse—each composed of a series of two- to four-page essays from different scholars. It is a creative and surprisingly effective structure. No single argument is developed at any length, of course. But the essays, punchy and provocative, accomplish far more than one would think possible in so short a space. Taken together, they define the contours of a much richer conversation than a series of independent papers could have done. [End Page 205]James Bailey’s Rethinking Poverty provides a more sustained argument. Working within the moral framework provided by Catholic social teaching, Bailey argues that US public policy regarding poverty needs to focus less on income relief and more on asset ownership and development. He lays out his basic case for the “asset paradigm” in chapter 1. In the current system, asset-building assistance is provided almost exclusively to the nonpoor rather than to the poor since it is mediated primarily through the federal income tax—which the poor do not pay. Income assistance to the poor, though crucial in the short term, does nothing to address the root causes of endemic poverty in the United States. In fact, the regressive structure of asset-building assistance has itself played an important role in perpetuating and exacerbating the wealth gap in this country. In the next two chapters, Bailey lays out two complementary moral frameworks that support a policy shift toward an asset paradigm: Catholic social teaching and the “capabilities approach” developed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. In the fourth chapter, Bailey surveys the history of racialized asset discrimination in US policy, demonstrating that the denial of asset-based assistance has been instrumental in creating enduring wealth disparities between white and black communities. In the fifth chapter, Bailey concludes by suggesting that an older, neglected American policy tradition did privilege an assets-based approach to poverty relief, and that tradition continues to be a viable option.Both books succeed, in my judgment, in rendering the principles and priorities of Catholic social teaching more concrete. Bailey’s main goal, obviously, is to recommend a specific policy orientation, and Moral Dynamics is full of practical suggestions: we should encourage conversations between theology and business schools at Catholic universities (89, 135); we should give more attention to empirical measures of well-being and development beyond narrowly economic ones like the gross domestic product (92–98); we should work to redefine the standard of “reasonableness” in the common... (shrink)

The strong correlation between people’s socioeconomic position and health within high income countries is a well-documented fact. A person’s occupation, income and education level tell us a lot about that person’s prospects on a long and healthy life, such that we can speak of a ‘social gradient in health’, or a ‘socioeconomic health gap’. This association is often perceived to be unjust. Therefore, it is generally thought that governments should aim to reduce socioeconomic health inequalities. However, this idea needs (...) ethical justification, for it is not evident if and why exactly these inequalities are unjust. For instance, are inequalities in health unjust per se? Or because the underlying socioeconomic inequalities are unjust? And does justice require equal health levels, or a minimum level of health? What complicates the issue, is that the width of the health gap, or the steepness of the social gradient, depends on what health measures are used. Overall, the more subjective the measure, the greater the inequalities appear to be. But are all these measures equally morally relevant? This dissertation aims to give a better understanding of these philosophical questions. It does so by investigating the question of what we should understand by health in the first part, after which it addresses the question of how to evaluate socioeconomic health inequalities in the light of justice. The introduction begins with a description of the phenomenon of socioeconomic health inequalities, and how it has been addressed by politicians, epidemiologists and philosophers in the past and today. The chapter continues by formulating the central question of the dissertation – that of which health inequalities should be focused in the light of a concern with social justice. It explicates how this dissertation contributes to answering that question, by discussing the potential relation between the conceptualisation of health and justice evaluations, and by discussing which questions are addressed in each of the following chapters. The chapter 2 addresses the question of how health is conceptualised in the philosophical and public heath literature, and how theoretical concepts of health differ. It proposes to approach health concepts as a Wittgensteinian family of thick concepts and argues that while theories on health generally argue in favour of one specific concept, a comparison of concepts shows that we may need different concepts of health given the variety of health practices. By explicating the differences between five concepts of health, this chapter argues that each captures aspects of health that all seem relevant when we talk and think about health. Classifying these concepts based on their distinctions reveals them as members of a conceptual family: each of the discussed concepts differs from the others in at least one respect and resembles the others in several respects. Moreover, the discussion of the concepts shows that ‘health’ always both describes a condition and values that condition at the same time. Having both descriptive and evaluative dimensions, we can see health concepts as ‘thick concepts’. Given this evaluative dimension, it is important to reflect on the question of what understanding of health guides specific practices. Moreover, the distinctions revealed by the classification can serve as a conceptual toolbox for reflection on the assumptions and purposes of health practices. How such reflection could work is illustrated by a brief exploration of what health aspects are focused upon in three specific health practices. Chapter 3 presents a study into the question of how health is conceptualised by ordinary citizens and to what extent conceptualisations of health differ between socioeconomic groups. By making use of the method of concept mapping, this study analyses how different socioeconomic groups formulate their own answers regarding the question ‘what does health mean to you?’. It presents concept maps of health for three different socioeconomic groups living in the city of Utrecht that reveal that all groups have a multidimensional understanding of health. An interpretation of the concept maps reveals nuanced differences between groups. The multiple aspects of health were also ranked by importance. It appears that each group assigned most importance to mental health. All in all, the study shows that people in lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to show a conceptualisation of health that refers to 1) the absence of health threats, 2) a person within his/her circumstances, 3) the value of functional notions, and 4) an accepting attitude towards life. Chapter 4 addresses the question of what the theoretical and empirical study to concepts of health could imply for health equity practices. It does so by exploring further the suggestions made in chapters 2 and 3. Regarding the question of which health aspects should guide health equity policies, this chapter discusses the question of whether we should primarily look at subjective or objective health measures, and whether a universal or relative standard of health should be central. While justice-related concerns of impartiality and equal treatment may seem to favour an objective perspective and a universal health standard, it appears that we have good reason to account for the subjective perspective as well. It is also argued that a concern for recognition and participatory parity gives room for relative health standards. Th room for relative health standards confronts us with the question of how to deal with mechanisms like adaptive preferences that the concept maps reveal. It proposes a way out, by arguing for society-relative health standards. Chapter 5 examines the question of whether inequalities in health should be evaluated ‘directly’, thus independently of a distribution of their social determinants. It proposes a sufficientarian perspective, such that the central question of evaluation is that of whether everyone is – or can be – healthy enough. By discussing two sufficientarian approaches to health and social justice – by Powers & Faden and by Nussbaum – this chapter distinguishes two ways of setting a threshold level for health. Both approaches appear to provide an unsatisfactory basis for justice evaluations and lead us away from direct evaluation if we try to settle health minima that are less arbitrary. In anticipation to chapters 6 and 7, it is argued that the perspective of sufficient health for relational equality escapes this arbitrariness: compared to that of a decent human life, it better helps to answer both the question of what socioeconomic health inequalities a society is due to avoid, and the question of when socioeconomic health inequalities are unjust considering their consequences. Chapter 6 discusses to what extent Daniels’s theory of health justice provides a satisfactory answer to the question of what health inequalities a society is due to avoid. Daniels proposes an indirect evaluative approach by arguing that we should evaluate socioeconomic health inequalities in the light of Rawls’s principles of justice as fairness. That is, if socioeconomic inequalities are in accordance with fair equality of opportunity and with the difference principle, the corresponding health inequalities would be just. It is shown that the suggestion that Rawls’s principles regulate the social determinants of health neglects that not all social determinants of health belong to society’s basic structure as conceived of by Rawls and are thereby not subjected to the principles of justice. To acknowledge the social mechanisms leading to socioeconomic health inequalities in their full complexity, it is argued that we should broaden our understanding of society’s structure in accordance with Young’s notion of social structural processes. This renders the question of what health inequalities a society is due to avoid into a question of what we can expect from the side of the various actors that uphold the social structures that produce socioeconomic health inequalities. Lastly, it is discussed how a shift to Young’s theory completes the shift to non-ideal theorising that seem already initiated by Daniels, and that with this, the distinction between direct and indirect evaluation dissolves. Chapter 7 discusses to what extent equality in health is of instrumental value for a society of free and equals. It thus takes up the idea proposed in chapter 5, that an evaluation of the consequences of health inequalities is also due. Taking relational equality as an evaluative framework reveals three ways in which inequalities in life expectancy threaten this ideal. That is, via unequal risks to stigmatisation, unequal risks to unemployment and the risk of unequal pension enjoyments. It is thereby shown that these risks are especially great for those lower down the socioeconomic strata. It thus concludes that equality in health is of instrumental value to relational equality. The chapter continues to argue that our instrumental approach opens a new perspective: to mitigate the identified injustices by changing society, rather than by reducing inequalities in health. This is argued to be an advantage in the light of the realistic assumption that of the socioeconomic health inequalities will persist. The paper thus offers a complementary approach to both the evaluation and the mitigation of the injustice of socioeconomic inequalities in health. The discussion chapter summarises the central findings of the analyses of health concepts and discusses questions regarding the philosophical and practical merits of comparing theoretical health concepts, the need for developing new health measures or concepts and the importance or nonsense of studying citizen’s views on health. Repeating this for the dissertation’s second part, the central findings of the chapters on justice evaluation are summarised and followed by a discussion of questions and issues that have remained unaddressed so far. Here, central points of discussion are my take on rules of distribution, the distinction of direct and indirect evaluation, the role of ideal and non-ideal theory, the idea of relational equality, and personal responsibility for health. The chapter concludes by noting that also in the light of justice evaluations, all commonly used health measures are relevant for justice. Therefore, my recommendations for policy and further research entail that inequalities in each of these measures deserve attention by both policymakers and researchers. Specifically, policymakers and researchers should give attention to how exactly each of these health inequalities come about, in such a way that a discussion about the question of who can be assigned responsibility to alleviate them is well-informed; and both should give attention to the effects of health inequalities on the opportunities for people to live on equal standing, in such a way that when these opportunities are diminished, actions can be considered to aim to restore relational equality. (shrink)

This extended editorial takes stock of the first volume of the journal Ethics and Social Welfare, offering an overview of the types of contributions in the first four issues and suggesting future themes. A critical summary is given of the contributions so far, which have included: moral philosophical theorizing; analysis of key ethical concepts; exploration of contested areas of policy and practice; empirical studies of living conditions, perceptions, attitudes and professional interventions; accounts of ethical issues (...) in practice; ethical issues in research; and models of professional ethical decision making. Themes identified for future consideration include: service user perspectives on aspects of social welfare practice; development of practice-based ethical theories for the social welfare professions; ideas about teaching professional and practical ethics; ethical issues in managing and distributing resources; critical analysis of the ethical implications of public policies; further contributions offering moral, political and social philosophical perspectives on issues of social justice, cultural diversity, global and local policies for tackling environmental and humanitarian crises. (shrink)

Given the unprecedented scope and stakes of contemporary environmental crisis, ethicists have raised critical questions about whether traditional religious texts can speak in a meaningful way to climate change and other environmental risks in the anthropocene. Building on the ethical urgency of the environmental justice movement, this essay offers a feminist reading of Jewish narratives from the Babylonian Talmud that centers attention on issues of power, privilege, and social inequality in the midst of disaster. Talmudic tales of the (...) destruction of Jerusalem critique the moral oblivion of wealthy residents who failed to act in response to crisis. Articulating a Jewish feminist reconstituative ethics, the author uses these tales to trace the ethical costs of epistemologies of ignorance—the complex strategies and social processes through which privileged communities cultivate ignorance of environmental suffering, maintain social distance from environmental risk, and disown moral culpability for environmental injustice. (shrink)

The moral and philosophical interrogation of white privilege remains an imperative in post-apartheid South Africa. Whereas the critique of whiteness involves both philosophical and psychological scrutiny, subsequent calls for white political silence and withdrawal have yet to be subjected to adequate psychological analysis. This paper offers such an analysis by questioning, firstly, the idea of appropriate emotions for white South Africans (shame, guilt, regret), posing instead the problems of mimed affect and neurotic goodness. White (...) approaches to guilt-alleviation and political passivity are queried, secondly, via the claim that such agendas lead all too easily to types of white exceptionalism and condescension, respectively. The ethical problems of political silence and withdrawal – implied superiority, non-participation and an unequal ‘rights of silence’ – provide a third area of questioning. The paper ends by introducing the Lacanian ideas of subjective destitution and identification with the symptom. These concepts throw a critical light on disavowals of white privilege and provide a novel means of thinking how white narcissism might be relinquished. (shrink)

Background The world is urbanizing rapidly; more than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, leading to significant transition in lifestyles and social behaviours globally. While offering many advantages, urban environments also concentrate health risks and introduce health hazards for the poor. In Bangladesh, although many public policies are directed towards equity and protecting people’s rights, these are not comprehensively and inclusively applied in ways that prioritize the health rights of citizens. The country is thus facing many (...) issues that raise moral and ethical concerns. Methods A narrative literature review was conducted between October 2016 and November 2017 on issues related to social justice, health, and human rights in urban Bangladesh. The key questions discussed here are: i) ethical dilemmas and inclusion of the urban poor to pursue social justice; and ii) the ethical obligations and moral responsibilities of the state and non-state sectors in serving Bangladesh’s urban poor. Using a Rawlsian theory of equality of opportunity to ensure social justice, we identified key health-related ethical issues in the country’s rapidly changing urban landscape, especially among the poor. Results We examined ethical dilemmas in Bangladesh’s health system through the rural–urban divide and the lack of coordination among implementing agencies. The unregulated profusion of the private sector and immoral practices of service providers result in high out-of-pocket expenditures for urban poor, leading to debt and further impoverishment. We also highlight policy and programmatic gaps, as well as entry points for safeguarding the right to health for Bangladeshi citizens. Conclusions The urban health system in Bangladesh needs a reform in which state and non-state actors should work together, understanding and acknowledging their moral responsibilities for improving the health of the urban poor by engaging multiple sectors. The social determinants of health should be taken into account when formulating policies and programs to achieve universal health coverage and ensure social justice for the urban poor in Bangladesh. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare: “To Count among the Living” by Aana Marie Vigen, and: New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views ed. by Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. NeuKelly Denton-BorhaugWomen, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare: “To Count among the Living” By Aana Marie Vigen NEW YORK: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2011. 304 PP. $31.11New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views Edited by Mary E. Hunt (...) and Diann L. Neu WOODSTOCK, VT: SKYLIGHT PATHS, 2010. 384 PP. $24.99In this age of the Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision, which declared that corporation owners’ religious commitments could provide a basis for denial of their employees’ critical reproductive health insurance benefits (with particular impact on the lives of women), ethical investigation of medical sociology, theology, and the realities of women’s lives is more important than ever. Originally released in 2006, Aana Marie Vigen’s Women, Ethics, and Inequality in US Healthcare makes important headway through these complex waters. And for this volume in the Palgrave Macmillan Series on Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice, editors Dwight N. Hopkins [End Page 202] and Linda E. Thomas set forth the goal to “pioneer conceptual work and boundary-pushing effort engaging Black Religion or Womanist thought, and social justice” (xiv).Rereleased in paperback in 2011 with a new preface, Vigen’s updated health statistics reveal how racial-ethnic minorities “continue to be overrepresented among the ranks of the uninsured and/or of those living in poverty” (xliii). Her project is to better understand what enables and perpetuates this inequitable distribution and oppression, and to suggest methods of redress and reform. But in order to accomplish any of this, society in general and especially those with socioeconomic power—including administrative leaders in health care, medical providers, and ethicists—need to listen much more deeply to the stories of those who are most vulnerable and are being most negatively affected by current health care systems and practices. For Vigen, this meant a decision to focus on in-depth interviews with eight black and Latina women with breast cancer, in addition to six health care providers.With this method, Vigen pursues a very ambitious goal to, as she puts it, “begin a conversation among several distinct dialogue partners: medical sociology, biomedical ethics, ethnography, theology, and feminist social ethics” (5). She uses a “reflexive” practice, striving for openness to the new insights and ideas that emerged from this creative, multidisciplinary encounter. However, even before launching her interviews, her analysis of the process to seek approval from the Institutional Research Board illustrates the “clash of cultures” she would encounter, as she writes, “one cannot take for granted that others will share the view that women of color are able to speak truth in their own right and out of their own experiences—without comparison to others—about human personhood, dignity, and adequate healthcare quality” (107). It is to Vigen’s credit that she remained undeterred; if anything, the struggle she encountered with powerful leaders helped to confirm and focus the value of this work: not to tell every story, “but to tell a few with care and attention to detail” (108).Vigen’s ethnographical method makes it possible for her to illuminate and address not only stark inequities but also much subtler dynamics of racism combined with socioeconomic discrimination. Along the way, she illustrates a wide variety of experiences of oppression. In contrast to the experience of white patients, these female patients of color tended to be sent to the accounting/financing office before being allowed to see the doctor (144). Though white patients may express strong emotions in medical settings, some women of color felt pressured to reassure white doctors that they could be rational and not overly emotional (141). Socioeconomic and racial discrimination often reinforced one another in these settings. Perhaps most alarming, Vigen notes, the white care providers she interviewed seemed to be very unconscious of [End Page 203] their own racial identity and its role in medical care encounters (165). Her final chapter concludes with a series of immensely practical ethical mandates that would help alter these oppressive patterns. Clergy, students of ethics, and anyone... (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential (...) risks’ to humanity. Nuclear wars, natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

Ubuntu, or humanness, has been theorized as a uniquely African contribution to the world. At the same time, others insist that it is a universal ethical principle. This paper particularly wants to look at a sub-theme of ubuntu studies, regarding how some of the authors and researchers have wanted to apply it to business, even suggesting that ubuntu can provide a model for ethical management principles that can also result in better outcomes for businesses. To approach business (...) with an ethical emphasis is clearly better than casting ethics aside in pursuit of profit without concern for human flourishing. But, can ubuntu management principles be used in a global capitalist framework, to soften the hard edges of cutthroat capitalism? Or does the ubuntu management approach without capitalist critique fall short of reaching the goal and practice of humanness? Additionally, perhaps the fault of current practices is not only due to the capitalist global economy, but also, an historical and a current global anti-black racism as well as sexism, which continues to skew the numbers of managers to greatly over-represent white males. This is due to historical privileging of men and the white race. We need to put forth our best efforts to ensure fair treatment of workers, who are valued as persons, and paid a good wage, with profits to go to them so that they can nourish and support their extended families. An ubuntu ethic could indeed be helpful as a guide for deciding which kinds of changes to the larger economic and political structures we should advocate and fight for (Publisher's website includes free full text). (shrink)

Ethical Empirical Rationalism (E-E-R) is a philosophical framework that seeks to bridge the gap between empirical evidence and rational moral theory, offering a comprehensive understanding of moral judgments. E-E-R challenges traditional dichotomies between reason and emotion by emphasizing the role of social structures, insights, and contextual deliberation in shaping moral cognition.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Infertility Treadmill: Feminist Ethics, Personal Choice, and the Use of Reproductive Technologies by Karey HarwoodKathryn Lilla CoxThe Infertility Treadmill: Feminist Ethics, Personal Choice, and the Use of Reproductive Technologies Karey Harwood Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 221pp. $22.00Karey Harwood’s The Infertility Treadmill, published in the University of North Carolina’s Studies in Social Medicine series, fills a lacuna in the infertility literature. Harwood (...) takes an interdisciplinary approach examining “assisted reproductive technologies” (ART) using current scientific, philosophical, theological, and—most importantly—her own ethnographic research. By way of a thick description of women’s experiences of infertility, she draws the reader into a rich ethical conversation regarding ARTs.Harwood “seeks first and foremost to offer an interpretation of the ethical significance of the increasing use of ART by bringing a particular set of normative or evaluative lenses to bear on a particular set of descriptive data” (8). She engaged in this study because of her desire to explore the connections between decisions to use ART and such factors as paid employment, delayed childbirth, and the ongoing balancing of work and family life. Harwood gathered her descriptive data by spending a year with the Atlanta chapter of RESOLVE (The National Infertility Association): attending monthly meetings and listening to speakers and participants as well as appraising RESOLVE’s national and local literature. She also conducted nine interviews with eight women and one man. Focusing on work and family conflicts in light of questions related to gender justice and the interplay between social and communal norms theories, on the one hand, and private and individual choice, on the other, Harwood teases out the ethical complexity surrounding ARTs.After surveying philosophical and theological literature relevant to her topic, Harwood names and examines existential concerns that emerged from her observations, conversations, and interviews with RESOLVE members. Clustered thematically, these concerns include the painful isolation of infertility, the stigma attached to using ARTs, people’s moralizing, how much treatment to pursue, what is the value in trying one more thing, socioeconomic status, and emotional awareness (62–97). Throughout her discussion of these concerns, [End Page 209] Harwood reminds ethicists of the importance of personal narratives for any treatment of an ethical issue like this.Moreover, her research leads Harwood to deduce that RESOLVE helps people with meaning-making, questions of purpose, language clarification, and various options surrounding infertility and ARTs. She asserts that the infertility experience can be a transformative one for the infertile. The decision-making process regarding the use of ARTs functioned as a type of ritual—albeit “a consumeristic ritual”—that aided people in working through the grief of infertility (157). Religious institutions have not always helped the infertile in these areas. Nonetheless, Harwood’s study leads her to conclude that RESOLVE members and leaders tend to be deficient in their capacities for challenging and critically examining how individual decisions intertwine with larger social contexts.Harwood acknowledges that her methodological decision to focus on one RESOLVE chapter limited her demographics (63–64). Moreover, although for the most part balanced, Harwood’s assessment of her findings is at times partial, even bordering on advocacy. For example, she clearly seeks to make the case that ethical analyses of infertility need to be more nuanced—incorporating more personal narrative—and that RESOLVE needs to be more open to critical self-reflection, especially the critical questioning of the “treadmill of infertility” (133). In her analysis of her findings, Harwood demonstrates how personal narratives help nuance ethical analysis. Less clear is whether RESOLVE can be or wants to be more self-critical and more questioning of its own core premises. Nonetheless, these limitations do not detract from Harwood’s important insights regarding “the infertility treadmill” and the host of issues related to ARTs—including consumerism, the role of rituals, meaning-making, suffering and grief, and gender justice, among others.Those struggling with infertility or considering ARTs will find Harwood to be an empathetic dialogue partner. Others will gain a deeper understanding of infertility’s toll by reading this book. Graduate and advanced undergraduate students will benefit from Harwood’s analysis of how personal decisions have wide-ranging... (shrink)

How is the ethically unacceptable persistence of the unnecessary suffering of extraordinarily poor street children in extraordinarily rich European Union capital cities to be durably remedied? Perhaps centrally, this philosophical essay argues, by re-articulating current inadequate understandings in the European Union of social injustice not as an absence of solidarity but as the failure to imagine and to act on "mutualities." First presented in 2011 as invited lectures for the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University in (...) Krakow, this extended reflection explores four central elements of the empirical situations of such extreme child poverty amid great affluence in the contexts of a progressively developed case study of destitute street children in Paris. The essay focuses successively on such utterly destitute children's poor health, poor housing, poor food, and poor education. In each case, outstanding contemporary philosophical reflections on violations of social justice - those of J. Rawls, A. Sen, R. Dworkin, and J. Habermas - are found to be deeply suggestive but finally insufficient for understanding such legally and morally intolerable situations. Yet each may be interpreted as contributing substantively to a progressive re-articulation of at least four critical elements of what a renewed idea of social justice in the European Union tomorrow must involve - "mutualizations" of fairness, understanding, respect, and articulacy. (shrink)

The human propensity to take an ethical stance toward oneself and others is found in every known society, yet we also know that values taken for granted in one society can contradict those in another. Does ethical life arise from human nature itself? Is it a universal human trait? Or is it a product of one's cultural and historical context? Webb Keane offers a new approach to the empirical study of ethical life that reconciles these (...) questions, showing how ethics arise at the intersection of human biology and social dynamics. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology, conversational interaction, ethnography, and history, Ethical Life takes readers from inner city America to Samoa and the Inuit Arctic to reveal how we are creatures of our biology as well as our history--and how our ethical lives are contingent on both. Keane looks at Melanesian theories of mind and the training of Buddhist monks, and discusses important social causes such as the British abolitionist movement and American feminism. He explores how styles of child rearing, notions of the person, and moral codes in different communities elaborate on certain basic human tendencies while suppressing or ignoring others."--Publisher's Web site. (shrink)

In this article we distinguish between philosophical bioethics (PB), descriptive policy orientated bioethics (DPOB) and normative policy oriented bioethics (NPOB). We argue that finding an appropriate methodology for combining empirical data and moral theory depends on what the aims of the research endeavour are, and that, for the most part, this combination is only required for NPOB. After briefly discussing the debate around the is/ought problem, and suggesting that both sides of this debate are misunderstanding one another (i.e. (...) one side treats it as a conceptual problem, whilst the other treats it as an empirical claim), we outline and defend a methodological approach to NPOB based on work we have carried out on a project exploring the normative foundations of paternal rights and responsibilities. We suggest that given the prominent role already played by moral intuition in moral theory, one appropriate way to integrate empirical data and philosophical bioethics is to utilize empirically gathered lay intuition as the foundation for ethical reasoning in NPOB. The method we propose involves a modification of a long-established tradition on non-intervention in qualitative data gathering, combined with a form of reflective equilibrium where the demands of theory and data are given equal weight and a pragmatic compromise reached. (shrink)

Several leadership and ethics scholars suggest that the transformational leadership process is predicated on a divergent set of ethical values compared to transactional leadership. Theoretical accounts declare that deontological ethics should be associated with transformational leadership while transactional leadership is likely related to teleological ethics. However, very little empirical research supports these claims. Furthermore, despite calls for increasing attention as to how leaders influence their followers’ perceptions of the importance of ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) for (...) organizational effectiveness, no empirical study to date has assessed the comparative impact of transformational and transactional leadership styles on follower CSR attitudes. Data from 122 organizational leaders and 458 of their followers indicated that leader deontological ethical values (altruism, universal rights, Kantian principles, etc.) were strongly associated with follower ratings of transformational leadership, while leader teleological ethical values (utilitarianism) were related to follower ratings of transactional leadership. As predicted, only transformational leadership was associated with follower beliefs in the stakeholder view of CSR. Implications for the study and practice of ethical leadership, future research directions, and management education are discussed. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the empirical agenda of business ethics research from a methodological perspective. It is argued that the quality of empirical research in the field remains relatively poor and unconvincing. Drawing on the distinctions between the two main philosophical positions from which methodologies in the social sciences are derived – positivism and interpretism – it is argued that it is business ethics' tradition of positivist, and highly quantitative approaches which may be at the (...) root of these epistemological problems. Six distinct aspects of business ethics research are identified and assessed according to their methodological impact. Accordingly, it is argued that more interpretive approaches may offer substantial liberating potential in the development of a stronger and more theory-rich empirical base. The author concludes by arguing for greater plurality and diversity in empirical research methodologies in the business ethics field. (shrink)

Postmodernism has evoked great controversy and it continues to do so today, as it disseminates into general discourse. Some see its principles, such as its fundamental resistance to metanarratives, as frighteningly disruptive, while a growing number are reaping the benefits of its innovative perspective. In Political Theory and Postmodernism, Stephen K. White outlines a path through the postmodern problematic by distinguishing two distinct ways of thinking about the meaning of responsibility, one prevalent in modern and the other in postmodern (...) perspectives. Using this as a guide, White explores the work of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, and Habermas, as well as 'difference' feminists, with the goal of showing how postmodernism can inform contemporary ethical-political reflection. In his concluding chapter, White examines how this revisioned postmodern perspective might bear on our thinking about justice. (shrink)

This book introduces the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant—in particular, the concepts of autonomy, dignity, and character—to economic theory, explaining the importance of integrating these two streams of intellectual thought. Mainstream economics is rooted in classical utilitarianism, recommending that decision makers choose the options that are expected to generate the largest net benefits. For individuals, the standard economic model fails to incorporate the role of principles in decision-making, and also denies the possibility of true choice, which can be independent of (...) preferences and principles altogether. For policymakers, standard decision-making frameworks recommend tradeoffs that are beneficial in terms of material goods or wealth, but may be morally questionable from a more person-centered perspective. Integrating Kantian ethics affects economics in three important ways. This integration allows for a more complete understanding of human choice, incorporating not just preferences and constraints, but also principles and strength of will or character. It demonstrates the broader impact of welfare economics, which generates policies that affect not only persons' well-being, but also their dignity and autonomy. Finally, it reconciles the traditional, individualist stance in economic models of choice with the social responsibility emphasized by many systems of philosophical ethics and heterodox schools of economics. (shrink)

Philosophy of science was once a much more socially engaged endeavor, and can be so again. After a look back at philosophy of science in the 1930s-1950s, I turn to discuss the current potential for returning to a more engaged philosophy of science. Although philosophers of science have much to offer scientists and the public, I am skeptical that much can be gained by philosophers importing off-the-shelf discussions from philosophy of science to science and society. Such efforts will likely look (...) like efforts to do applied ethics by merely applying ethical theories to particular contexts and problems. While some insight can be gained by these kinds of endeavors, the most interesting and pressing problems for the actual practitioners and users of science are rarely addressed. Instead, I recommend that philosophers of science engage seriously and regularly with scientists and/or the users of science in order to gain an understanding of the conceptual issues on the ground. From such engagement, flaws in the traditional philosophical frameworks, and how such flaws can be remedied, become apparent. Serious engagement with the contexts of science thus provides the most fruit for philosophy of science per se and for the practitioners whom the philosophers aim to assist. And if one focuses on contexts where science has its most social relevance, these efforts can help to provide the thing that philosophy of science now lacks: a full-bodied philosophy of science in society. (shrink)

Global ethics addresses some of the most pressing ethical concerns today, including rogue states, torture, scarce resources, poverty, migration, consumption, global trade, medical tourism, and humanitarian intervention. It is both topical and important. How we resolve the dilemmas of global ethics shapes how we understand ourselves, our relationships with each other and the social and political frameworks of governance now and into the future. This is seen most clearly in the case of climate change, where our actions now (...) determine the environment our grandchildren will inherit, but it is also the case in other areas as our decisions about what it is permissible for humans beings to do to each other determines the type of beings we are. This book, suitable for course use, introduces students to the theory and practice of global ethics, ranging over issues in global governance and citizenship, poverty and development, war and terrorism, bioethics, environmental and climate ethics and gender justice. (shrink)

CAPPE LPO Box 8260 ANU Canberra ACT 2601 Australia Tel: +61 (0)2 6125 4355, Fax: +61 (0)2 6125 6579; Email: michael.selgelid{at}anu.edu.au ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract This article reviews ethically relevant history of tuberculosis and recent developments regarding extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). It argues that tuberculosis is one of the most important neglected topics in bioethics. With an emphasis on XDR-TB, it examines a range of the more challenging ethical issues associated with (...) tuberculosis: individual obligations to avoid infecting others, coercive social distancing measures, third-party notification, health workers' duty to treat contagious patients, and international justice. In each of these cases, key philosophical questions are highlighted and the need for empirical research/information is demonstrated. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The present article identifies how social determinants of health raise two categories of philosophical problems that also fall within the smaller domain of ethics; one set pertains to the philosophy of epidemiology, and the second set pertains to the philosophy of health and social justice. After reviewing these two categories of ethical concerns, the limited conclusion made is that identifying and responding to social determinants of health requires inter-disciplinary reasoning across epidemiology and philosophy. For the (...) reasoning used in epidemiology to be sound, for its scope and (moral) purpose as a science to be clarified as well as for social justice theory to be relevant and coherent, epidemiology and philosophy need to forge a meaningful exchange of ideas that happens in both directions. (shrink)

Can SRI be a means to make investors both virtuous and prosperous? This paper argues that there can be significant tensions between these goals, and that SRI (and indeed all investment) should not allow the pursuit of maximizing investment returns to prevail over an ethical agenda of promoting social and economic justice and environmental protection. The discourse on SRI has changed dramatically in recent years to the point where its capacity to promote social emancipation, sustainable development and (...) other ethical goals is in jeopardy. Historically, SRI was a boutique sector of the market dominated by religious-based investors who sought to invest in accordance with the tenets of their faith. From the early 1970s, the aspirations of the SRI movement morphed significantly in the context of the divestment campaign against South Africa's apartheid regime. No longer were social investors satisfied with just avoiding profit from immoral activities; instead, they also sought to change the behavior of others. Business case SRI is a problematic SRI benchmark for several reasons: often there is a countervailing business case for financing irresponsible activities, given the failure of markets to capture all social and environmental externalities; secondly, even if investors care about such concerns, there may be no means of financially quantifying their significance for investment purposes; and, thirdly, even if such factors can be financially quantified, they may be deemed to be such long-term financial costs or benefits that they become discounted and ignored. The ethics case for SRI and ethical business practices more generally takes the view that both investors and the companies they fund have ethical responsibilities that trump the pursuit of profit maximization. Ethical investment should be grounded on this foundation. However, it may not be enough. To keep ethical investment ethical will likely require institutionalizing new norms and governance standards, in such domains as reforming fiduciary duties and the internal governance of financial organizations. SRI's own codes of conduct including the UNPRI have yet to demonstrate the robustness to move the financial community beyond business as usual. (shrink)

This article develops an approach to ethical globalization based on a feminist, political ethic of care; this is achieved, in part, through a comparison with, and critique of, Thomas Pogge's World Poverty and Human Rights. In his book, Pogge makes the valid and important argument that the global economic order is currently organized such that developed countries have a huge advantage in terms of power and expertise, and that decisions are reached purely and exclusively through self-interest. Pogge uses an (...) institutional rights framework to argue that direct responsibility for global poverty and inequality lies with the citizens of developed countries, since suffering and death are caused by global economic arrangements designed and imposed by our governments. While this argument is certainly compelling, I have argued that it tells us little about the actual effects of globalization on the real people of the South - including women, children and the elderly. As a result, it can offer little in the way of real alternatives or policy prescriptions. As a moral orientation, a care ethic relies on a relational moral ontology, and leads us to consider different values in terms of human flourishing. Moreover, it pushes us to consider the normative implications of aspects of the global political economy which are usually not 'seen' at all, including the global distribution of care work and the corresponding patterns of gender and racial inequality, the underprovision of care and resources for caring work in both the developed and developing world, and the ways in which unpaid or low-paid caring work helps to sustain a cycle of exploitation and inequality on a global scale. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name (...) for threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

Background: Identifying and safeguarding ethics in eHealth services from the service users’ perspective in social care and healthcare is important. The use of eHealth services should not prejudice the quality of services or the social interaction required in care. There is a lack of studies about the ethics of eHealth services from the service users’ perspective. Aim: The aim of this study is to identify and analyse ethical issues related to eHealth in social care and healthcare (...) from the service users’ perspective. Research design: An integrative literature review. Ethical considerations: The review followed good scientific conduct. Research context and data sources: A systematic literature search was performed using CINAHL, Scopus, PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Academic Search Premier to find relevant empirical studies published in English from their earliest up to 30 November 2018. In addition, reference lists from the identified research papers were searched. A quality appraisal of each paper included in the review was conducted before thematic analysis. Results: In total, 26 studies were included in the review, and from these four ethical themes were identified: (1) privacy in eHealth, (2) beneficence and nonmaleficence in eHealth, (3) justice in eHealth and (4) trust in eHealth. The ethical issues within these themes were related to information sharing; ownership; access to information and data protection; informed consent; defence of rights; and equity, equality and proportionality of response. Conclusion: eHealth inequality occurs in social care and healthcare. eHealth service designers and social care and healthcare professionals need to act to maintain and improve user access and data accuracy and provide different levels of security in eHealth services, relative to the information stored. There is a need for further research about ethical issues of eHealth from the user’s perspective, including the customer-oriented availability and usability of eHealth services which avoid discrimination. (shrink)

Significant inequalities in health between and within countries have been measured over the past decades. Although these inequalities, as well as attempts to improve sub-standard health, raise profound issues of social justice and the right to health, those working in the field of bioethics have historically tended to devote greater attention to ethical issues raised by new, cutting-edge biotechnologies such as life-support cessation, genomics, stem cell research or face transplantation. This suggests that bioethics research and scholarship may revolve (...) around issues that, while fascinating and important, currently affect only a small minority of the world's population. In this article, we examine the accusation that bioethics is largely dominated by Anglophone and industrialized world interests, and explore what kinds of positive contributions a 'bioethics from below' (as Paul Farmer calls it) can make to the field of bioethics in general. As our guide in this exploration, we make use of some experiences and lessons learned in our collaborative bioethics project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Building Bioethics Capacity and Justice in Health. We conclude that while there is some evidence of increased attention to bioethical challenges in developing countries, this development should be further cultivated, because it could help expand the horizons of the field and enhance its social relevance wherever it is practiced. (shrink)

The chapter studies the ethical dimensions of Beauvoir’s existentialism and Irigaray’s ontology of difference. It argues that Irigaray builds on one central but largely neglected result of Beauvoir’s moral philosophical argumentation: the claim that fundamentally sexual subordination constitutes an ethical problem that cannot be adequately solved merely through social reforms, political interventions, or theoretical reflections. By comparing Beauvoir’s concept of erotic generosity to Irigaray’s discussion of wonder and love, the chapter demonstrates that both philosophers conceive of (...) male privilege as an ethical issue that must be worked out between individual women and men in their concrete encounters. The task is to reform and cultivate not just human behaviors, actions, beliefs and cognitions, but also one’s own emotions and desires. (shrink)

The article discusses how theory and practice in global ethics affect each other. First, the author explores how the study of ethics has changed in the era of globalization and ponders what the role of the field of study of global ethics is in this context. Second, she wants to show how the logical fallacies in widening study field of ethics produce false polarizations between facts and value judgements in social ethics made in various cultural contexts. She further elaborates (...) how these false polarizations prevent constructive cross-cultural and transnational discussions on ethical guidelines and principles that are needed to produce joint action to deal with serious ethical issues globally and nationally. Finally, the paper argues that in order to find a way to solve our shared complex ethical problems in global context, we need to get back to basics by focusing on the method of ethics, that is, self-critical and logical analysis of sound argumentation and justification of our values and moral pr.. (shrink)

Intellectual Disability: Ethics, Dehumanization, and a New Moral Community presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the roots and evolution of the dehumanization of people with intellectual disabilities. Examines the roots of disability ethics from a psychological, philosophical, and educational perspective Presents a coherent, sustained moral perspective in examining the historical dehumanization of people with diminished cognitive abilities Includes a series of narratives and case descriptions to illustrate arguments Reveals the importance of an interdisciplinary understanding of the social construction of (...) intellectual disability. (shrink)

The edited volume presents new and unconventional views of many traditional moral values, such as humanity, human dignity, moral right (of life), justice and responsibility. The originality of the contributions contained in this book is to analyze these values and approaches from the point of view of non-utilitarian consequentialism and ethics of social consequences as one of its forms. The authors of the chapters present new ways of solving many of the contemporary ethical and moral issues, for example, (...) in bioethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics, teaching ethics, and cyber ethics, based on non-utilitarian consequentialism and ethics of social consequences. They also confront these approaches with other ethical theories and philosophical traditions, which serve them as further incentives for the development of non-utilitarian consequentialism and ethics of social consequences in philosophical, applied and professional ethics. (shrink)

The 2016 outbreak of the Zika arbovirus was associated with large numbers of cases of the newly-recognised Congenital Zika Syndrome. This novel teratogenic epidemic raises significant ethical and practical issues. Many of these arise from strategies used to avoid cases of CZS, with contraception in particular being one proposed strategy that is atypical in epidemic control. Using contraception to reduce the burden of CZS has an ethical complication: interventions that impact the timing of conception alter which people will (...) exist in the future. This so-called ‘non-identity problem’ potentially has significant social justice implications for evaluating contraception, that may affect our prioritisation of interventions to tackle Zika. This paper combines ethical analysis of the non-identity problem with empirical data from a novel survey about the general public's moral intuitions. The ethical analysis examines different perspectives on the non-identity problem, and their implications for using contraception in response to Zika. The empirical section reports the results of an online survey of 93 members of the US general public exploring their intuitions about the non-identity problem in the context of the Zika epidemic. Respondents indicated a general preference for a person-affecting intervention over an impersonal intervention. However, their responses did not appear to be strongly influenced by the non-identity problem. Despite its potential philosophical significance, we conclude from both theoretical considerations and analysis of the attitudes of the community that the non-identity problem should not affect how we prioritise contraception relative to other interventions to avoid CZS. (shrink)

The increase in the scope of international collaborative medical research involving human subjects is raising the problem of whether and how to maintain Western ethical standards when research is conducted in countries with very different social and ethical values. Existing international ethical guidelines for research largely reflect Western concepts of human rights, focusing on the bioethical principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. However, in countries and societies where these values are understood differently or are (...) not expressed in local cultures and institutions, it may be impossible or of no practical value to insert them into the research setting.In the United States, individual informed consent is considered ethically imperative for research involving human subjects. However, this imperative may be difficult to instill in societies that define persons by their relations to others, and important decisions are commonly made by heads of households or group leaders rather than by individuals. The baseline economic and health care conditions in foreign communities may also create ethical conflicts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hypatia 16.3 (2001) 172-176 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Diagnosis: Difference: The Moral Authority of Medicine Diagnosis: Difference: The Moral Authority of Medicine. By Abby L. Wilkerson. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. In this compact volume, Abby Wilkerson makes several important contributions to the burgeoning literature of feminist (bio)ethics by providing substantive arguments in support of some of the key intuitive beliefs that are central to much feminist (...) bioethics thinking. Most centrally, she carefully fleshes out a feminist case for re-framing traditional bioethics approaches to the relation between health and justice. Particularly valuable is her richly detailed argument establishing the importance of bringing to the realm of health and health care Iris Marion Young's (1990) important insight that justice involves far more than questions of distribution.At the same time, Wilkerson demonstrates another major feminist tenet: that ethics and epistemology are intimately related. This connection is developed [End Page 172] through a second major theme in which she systematically tracks medicine's tendency to extend its accepted epistemic authority over physical ailments into a general authority over many other aspects of life. She documents examples of medicine's success in leveraging its scientific knowledge about certain aspects of the body into a broader ideological vision through which it claims epistemic authority in the personal and moral realm. By making explicit the gaps between medical knowledge and moral knowledge, she is able to challenge the moral authority and social power that are now granted to medical experts.While these arguments are important, they are not the whole story of the book, for its message is as much about process in bioethics as it is about conclusions. Wilkerson insists that the specific perspective of the theorist affects her/his reasoning. She demonstrates the importance of this fact by using her own distinct position as a bisexual woman to make visible the implicit acceptance and perpetuation of several ideological norms by those in dominant positions in both medicine and bioethics. The central method of the book is what she calls "material-semiotic." It involves the assumption that all human experience is mediated by culture, and the body (specifically the medicalized body) must be recognized as a political site subject to a variety of social values. We must, therefore, attend to the cultural meanings of health and illness and explore the ways that society labels and responds to these conditions. This requires investigation of the specific bodily (material) effects of these meanings in both individual and social experience.The book begins with the epistemological frame of the argument in which Wilkerson claims that medicine is deeply infected by the values and biases of the dominant culture, including its tendencies towards sexist, racist, classist, homophobic, and ablist attitudes. She explores ways in which medical theory and practice stigmatize bodily experiences common to women (in gynecology, obstetrics, and the treatment of victims of sexual or domestic violence). Medicalizing so many aspects of women's experience has the effect of obscuring women's subjective experiences and replacing them with medicine's normative perspectives of appropriate psychological norms. Moreover, the norm of femaleness promoted is a heterosexual, middle class, white variety such that other forms of social difference (e.g., non-white, non-heterosexual) must then also be medicalized and stigmatized; that is, the medical model requires explanations of difference that render pathological most variations on the privileged norm. Hence, alternative sexualities, like differences in class, abilities, race, and gender are interpreted through a medical lens that is thoroughly value-laden. In such ways, the epistemological authority granted to medicine is conflated into an unjustified form of moral authority. Although similar biases are common to every powerful social institution in the United States, they are especially pernicious within medicine because of the enormous influence it exerts in shaping knowledge about the nature of difference between social [End Page 173] groups. This immense social power may be directed towards reducing inequalities and promoting social justice, but, all too often, it is used to convey beliefs and norms that serve the interests of the privileged.Wilkerson's criticism is not reserved... (shrink)

The term “environmental justice” carries with it a sort of ambiguity. On the one hand, it refers to a movement of social activism in which those involved fight and argue for fairer, more equitable distribution of environmental goods and equal treatment of environmental duties. This movement is related to, and ideally informed by, the second use of the term, which refers to the academic discipline associated with legal regulations and theories of justice and ethics with regard to sustainability, the (...) environment, and ecology. It is this latter, more academic—though vast and interdisciplinary—use of the term that is the subject of this essay. However, activists who pay careful attention to the arguments offered with regard to the political, legal, social, and philosophical treatments of these issues are potentially in a stronger position with regard to their own social movement. In that way, the two uses of the term may progress hand in hand. More broadly, however, the foundational claim about which both grassroots activists and legal, ethical, and policy advocates can agree is that environmental burdens—climate change, pollution, and their associated health risks—are borne disproportionately by the poorest and most vulnerable populations, and tend to have the greatest impact on racial and ethnic minorities, no matter where they are in the world. This is what makes the empirical questions about the environment a normative question about justice. (shrink)

Justice for children and during childhood and the particular political, social and moral status of children has long been a neglected issue in ethics, and in social and political philosophy. The application of general, adult-oriented theories of justice to children can be regarded as particularly problematic. Philosophers have only recently begun to explore what it means to consider children as equals, what goods are especially valuable to them, and what are the obligations of justice different agents have toward (...) children. In addition, while philosophers have extensively written about global poverty and inequality, the issue of disadvantages during childhood, especially child poverty, has only been superficially addressed. This also applies to the Capability Approach (CA) as a normative theory. Although the socio-scientific and economic literature on how to conceptualize capabilities and functionings of children and how to measure them in the context of poverty and wellbeing is steadily growing, the normative aspects of these issues are still under-theorized. The CA offers a unique framework to engage with both the topic of justice for children and questions concerning what justice implies and demands with regard to children living and growing up in disadvantaged circumstances. Furthermore, justice and disadvantage during childhood is a compellingly interdisciplinary topic that invites the combination of ethical and philosophical reasoning together with socio-scientific theories and empirical knowledge. In this special issue of Ethical Perspectives we bring together theoretical and empirically informed discussions that explore the CA in relation to children and the many disadvantages they can face in their lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Insurrectionist Ethics: Radical Perspectives on Social Justice ed. by Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Daryl ScrivenDuncan R. CordryEdited by Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Daryl Scriven Insurrectionist Ethics: Radical Perspectives on Social Justice Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 295 pp.In the collected volume Insurrectionist Ethics, edited by Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Daryl Scriven, contributors engage in discussion over the ethics of revolt. Faced with the systemic persistence of immiseration, and (...) given normative morality's complicity in sustaining such systems of domination, what ethical and practical recourse do the oppressed have to liberate themselves? This is a question which runs throughout the book and motivates the problem of an 'insurrectionist ethics,' as coined by Leonard Harris: a field of ethics which takes up a position, as he writes in the foreword, "that is in, starts from, and sojourns to a different place" (p. xiii). It is a re-imagining of the ethical which departs from romanticized notions of agency and reason, often in ways that favor descriptions over normative or explanatory principles. This shift gives it a high degree of flexibility with respect to its approach, which nevertheless remains guided by a common "insurrectionist sentiment" that lends consistency to the works of the text's contributors: they all "favor the abolition of what creates non-being, living death and necro-being" (p. xi). The book is split into a total of five topical sections, each of which discusses a different facet of insurrectionist ethics: its conceptions and context, its ties to liberation theory throughout the Americas, applications and correctives for its theory, its relation to pragmatism, and its future. Bookending contributions from the editors unpack the meaning and definition of an insurrectionist ethics.In this review, I survey several chapters of the volume by discussing Scriven's and Carter's definitions and examining a few ways in which these definitions produce tensions in a few selected contributions. Doing so will highlight some important differences between [End Page 110] the authors' approaches to insurrectionist ethics while underscoring the consistency which commits them to abolition; ultimately, Insurrectionist Ethics is as much an invitation as it is an introduction to the tradition it espouses.Scriven's introductory chapter, "The Very Idea of Insurrectionist Ethics," exposes an insurrectionist ethic within the thought of David Walker, while Carter's conclusive essay, "Death by a Thousand Cuts: Insurrectionist Ethics in a Present less Oppressive than the Past," attempts to pin down a definition by analyzing its essential elements. Their difference in approach is not insignificant. What is revealed through Scriven's angle, for example, is that insurrectionist ethics is indeed a tradition—to work through the meaning of such an ethics is to lend historical weight to the lives of past and present insurrectionists and to declare solidarity with their actions at the level of valuation. A number of such figures circulate throughout the volume, including David Walker, Maria W. Stewart, Alain L. Locke, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Tommy Curry, and Leonard Harris. With the exception of the latter-most, none of these figures make direct contributions to the collection (although their spirits animate it). Its status as a tradition means that insurrectionist ethics is not limited to the confines of this volume, itself more knot than archive: such a tradition reaches well beyond the text and invites its readers to extend its concepts and debates in all directions. It has not one past but several, and not one future but many.Furthermore, Scriven's essay points out that insurrectionist ethics is not simply an indictment of corrupt institutions on the basis of some moral framework or other—it is foremost an outright rejection of the alliance between customary morality and systems of oppression; it searches for an ethos that condones direct action against such systems, operating at a philosophical level to produce conceptual and theoretical weaponry that "incite resistance and demands action" (p. xiv). Yet, as the form of the volume itself demonstrates, the arguments and methods of reasoning deployed by insurrectionists (past and present) to condone such actions has tended to vary, sometimes drastically. Nonetheless, the multiplicity which properly belongs to this tradition—a point explored further in... (shrink)

Morality is traditionally understood as comprised of two components: justice and mercy. The first component, justice, the universal component of the form, is frequently seen as foundational for any moral system – which poses a challenge of explaining the second component, mercy, the particular component of content. Kantian ethics provides an example of this approach. After formulating his universalist theory of ethics in the Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals and further developing it in the Critique of practical reason, (...) he attempts to use it in order to establish the morality of mercy in the Metaphysics of morals. Yet can universal morality of justice necessitate particular ethics of mercy? Using the example of competitive games, the relations between the ethics of justice and that of mercy are demonstrated, and it is shown that the former does not lead to the latter. Moreover, the universality of the rules of moral behavior can serve as a form for blatant brutality. Analyzing the characteristics of particular morality, we can conclude that physical humanity of the moral object, perceived as such by the subject, is a required condition for mercy. Removal of object's humanity is a necessary step toward an ethical system that allows cruelty – a system that can still be based on universal moral rules. Bhagavad Gītā, on the other hand, can be seen as an example of combining nīṣkāmakarma, the formal, universal ethics of desireless action, with a variety of particular motivations originating in the nature and social context of the moral agent. (shrink)

Comparing Aristotle's and Confucius' ethics, where each represents an ethics of virtue, I show that they are not susceptible to some of the frequent charges against them when compared to non-virtue ethical theories like utilitarianism and deontology. These charges are that virtue ethics: (1) lack universal laws; they cannot (a) provide content for actions, and (b) they do not consider actions in the evaluation of morality. (2) Virtue ethics cannot provide the resources for dealing with social justice (...) and human rights practices. Contrary to these charges, I show how these thinkers' ethics can account for the first generation civil and political rights, and the second generation economic, social and cultural rights. (shrink)

This Special Issue [available free online] co-edited by Peg Brand Weiser (University of Arizona) and R. Scott Kretchmar (Pennsylvania State University) is entitled, "The Myles Brand (1942-2009) Era at the NCAA: A Tribute and Scholarly Review." The late Myles Brand was a philosopher (of action theory; social and political applied philosophy, philosophy of sport), former department chair (University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Arizona), dean (Arizona), provost (The Ohio State University), president (University of Oregon; Indiana University), and fourth (...) president of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). [An extensive website created in 2020 by Peg Brand Weiser of over 300 entries of his work--speeches, essays, podcasts, and videos--can be found at a website under his name.] This Special Issue includes insightful essays on the legacy of Myles Brand by authors who dig deeply into continuing controversies within higher education, intercollegiate athletics, and the values, principles, and style of Brand's leadership. They take up the gauntlet to dissect and disseminate Brand's lasting influence on the institution of the NCAA in terms of the decisions and policies enacted between 2003 and 2009 that continue to affect the well-being of today's student-athletes, the sustainability of high-cost intercollegiate competition, and now, the "threat to" or "abandonment of" (depending on your point of view) "amateur status" due to students' newfound economic agency and ability to profit from NILs (Name, Image, Likeness) monetary deals. Essays include a co-authored "Editors' Introduction;" an introductory preface by John R. Thelin ("From Chaos to Coherence: Myles Brand and the Balancing of Academics and Athletics"); a short remembrance by Josh Brand ("Myles Brand, My Father"); and essays by Peg Brand Weiser ("Life is an Adventure: From Action Theory to Action"); R. Scott Kretchmar ("President Brand's Gambit: Inviting Scholars Inside the Tent"); Walter Harrison ("Myles Brand and the Responsibility of Leadership"); Heather Reid ("Amateurism, Professionalism and the Value of College Sports"); Lou Mats ("Myles Brand: Intercollegiate Athletics Within the Limits of the Academic Mission Alone'); Welch Suggs and Jennifer Hoffman ("Myles Brand's Collegiate Model and the Post-Amateurism World of College Sports"); David K. Wiggins ("Myles Brand: A Leader Deeply Committed to Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Social Justice"); C. Keith Harrison, Bernard Franklin, and Whitney Griffin ("Myles Brand's Philosophy of the Value of Intercollegiate Athletics: A Collaborative Effort and the Perspective of Two Black Males on Educational Achievement at the NCAA"); and Rodney Fort ("Myles Brand's College Sports Sustainability: 'Amateurism,' Finances, and Institutional Balance. (shrink)

The paper points out three serious problems in Ruud ter Meulen’s view of solidarity and of its role in healthcare ethics. First, it is not clear whether and to what extent ter Meulen expects normative concepts to be rooted in existing social practices: his criticism of liberal theories of justice seems to imply a different view on this issue than his implicit assumption that normative concepts are independent from social and historical trends. Second, it is not clear at (...) which level his notion of solidarity is meant to be applied: does it provide principles for individuals or for institutions? Nor is it clear at what level of generality it should work: is it meant for healthcare institutions or for states, for citizens or for healthcare practitioners? Third, it is not at all clear how the communitarian and the universalist aspirations in his conception of solidarity can be reconciled. In light of such difficulties it is argued that within philosophical discourse solidarity can be a useful notion only if it can be clearly distinguished from existing and commonly used ethical concepts. Three examples of such narrow and specific uses of solidarity are presented. Finally, a sceptical view of confining the work of applied philosophers to articulating normative concepts is put forward and an alternative view of blending empirical and philosophical analysis is proposed. This vision of field philosophy requires serious attention and careful understanding of the circumstances and constraints within which normative recommendations operate. It is suggested that such a modest and empirically grounded understanding of normative work is a better way of honouring the belief that philosophy is rooted in social institutions and in complex webs of relations. (shrink)

This essay argues that feminist ethics offers a model of moral philosophy that is enriched by empirical information and critical thought about actual social and moral forms of life and their distributions of authority, privilege and power. Feminist ethics is committed to revealing the ways that these social realities affect both moral philosophy and ethical thinking. Through analysis of a series of diverse examples of claims in contemporary moral philosophy, I illustrate the pitfalls of failing to (...) test philosophical generalizations about moral thinking and moral recognition in light of the realities of human social life and the pervasive presence of social hierarchies that shape moral attitudes as well as social interactions. In conclusion, I argue briefly for a non-ideal, nonfoundationalist, reflexively critical, and naturalized approach to philosophical theory in ethics and to everyday moral thinking. (shrink)

Background: Attending surgeons must maintain balance between promoting education and assuring safe, transparent patient care. This investigation aimed to define ethics that guide surgical training. We hypothesized that resident autonomy in the operating room is influenced by attending approach to patients, specifically patients considered to be vulnerable. Materials and Methods: After IRB approval, surgeons from three institutions were invited to participate in a pilot, survey, exploring how principles of patient autonomy, physician beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice apply to participant opinions. Responses (...) were transcribed and coded for quantitative and qualitative analysis. Results: 51 attendings and 55 residents completed the survey. We identified that patient autonomy is upheld through transparent consent practices. Intraoperative supervision is a key practice that maintains the principles of physician beneficence and nonmaleficence and mitigates the risk of resident participation. Vulnerable patients were defined by respondents as those unable to participate in their own consent and those limited by social determinants of health and barriers to medical literacy. In contrast, resident participation is not limited in the care of vulnerable patients but is restricted in cases of higher complexity and those procedures deemed to have lower error margins. Conclusions: Although residents measure the success of their training based on their level of intraoperative independence, autonomy afforded to the resident does not only depend on objective skill. There are ethical considerations that the attending must navigate as they decide on effective teaching and safe surgical management, which is especially relevant in the care of complex cases. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Generational Timescapes and Biotic Kinship in Omar El Akkad's American WarMichael Boyden (bio)References to future generations and how they might be impacted by decisions in the present abound in climate change communication—from scholarship dealing with the energy transition and climate control, to international agreements, and to public debates in civil society generally. One oft-noted reason why generational views are so frequently invoked in such contexts is that they serve (...) to make tangible otherwise intractable problems so vast in proportion that they tend to confound conventional ways of allocating ethical responsibilities and considerability. Conjuring the ways in which our choices and actions affect the quality of life of concrete individuals to whom we are connected by means of kinship ties awakens the present generation's sense of obligation toward the future.As a number of scholars have noted, however, generational views might also hamper our ability to work toward the kind of sustained transformation of the global economy that is required to ensure that Earth remains inhabitable in the future. In philosophy, political science, and adjacent fields, critiques of generational discourse have revolved around the limitations of governing models of ethics, as in discussions of Derek Parfit's "repugnant conclusion" (388) and in efforts to find new models of distributive justice that depart from utilitarian and contractualist approaches.1 In turn, scholars working in the interdisciplinary frameworks of critical posthumanism and queer feminism have attempted to rethink notions of kinship in ways that consider the ethical value of the nonhuman world and identities not grounded in biological kinship.2In this article, I argue that climate change fiction has the potential to [End Page 11] dramatize the conflicting valences of generational discourse—in ways that less layered, nonfictional narratives often fail to do—and in doing so points up the possibility of conceiving of environmental ethics in a different, less kinship-based fashion. Using Omar El Akkad's American War (2017) as my tutor text, I will argue that this novel presents a potent critique of the kind of generational discourse prevalent in debates about global warming today.My analysis is meant to show how El Akkad's novel, which adopts a markedly transcultural perspective that questions Western exceptionalism, brings out the limitations of—and visualizes alternatives to—the generational schemes through which the consequences of anthropogenic climate change are rendered intelligible. At the same time, I suggest, the novel offers pathways toward conceiving an ecocentric ethical framework that does not reproduce the anthropocentric assumptions of generational discourse.Climate Change and Generational DiscourseI start by defining more closely what we mean when we talk about generations. Political scientist Jonathan White has usefully distinguished three strands of generational views that tend to blend into each other in recent debates on climate change but that deserve to be kept analytically separate. The first of these is the genealogical understanding of generations, which pertains to familial "relations between individuals in their specificity" (765). This genealogical conception of generations has been with us for a long time. It is present, for instance, in biblical texts and classical historiography, which invoke family bonds to justify a given social order. Genealogical views are equally present, however, in modern evolutionary thinking and in the ordinary understanding of the generations of a family. The second strand identified by White is the sociological understanding of generations, which refers to "social groups defined by an apparent unity of ideas and attributes, irrespective of personal ties" (765). Sociological generations convey differences between young and old, or progressive and backward-looking forces, in times of societal transformation. Scholars trace this sociological conception of generations back to the nineteenth century, when the forces of industrialism and nationalism [End Page 12] magnified experiential divergences among social groups. Finally, White considers philosophical generations, which refer to "a society at different moments of existence" (765). Here, we may think of postrevolutionary contexts, when the clock is figuratively turned to zero and a new understanding of the social order emerges. Contrary to genealogical and sociological schemes, such philosophical generations are not grounded in a specific empirical formation; rather, they constitute a conceptual formula for organizing the (long-term) future.What makes generational... (shrink)

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual visiting technologies were rapidly integrated into the care offered by intensive care units (ICUs) in the UK and across the globe. Today, these technologies offer a necessary adjunct to in-person visits for those with ICU access limited by geography, work/caregiving commitments, or frailty. However, few empirical studies explore the ethical issues associated with virtual visiting. This study aimed to explore the anticipated or unanticipated ethical issues raised by using virtual visiting in (...) the ICU, such that healthcare professionals can be informed about how to carry out virtual visits ethically, safely and productively. Methods We used a descriptive exploratory qualitative research approach recruiting a convenience sample of newly-graduated junior doctors facilitating ICU virtual visits in a tertiary academic centre. Eight newly graduated junior doctors, seven female and one male, aged 23–27, participated in semi-structured interviews. We analysed transcripts using an inductive coding approach. Results Five overarching themes emerged. Two of the themes namely, ‘fulfilling a moral instinct to connect families’ and ‘promoting autonomy’, arose from participants’ descriptions of how virtual visits aligned with healthcare standards and practices they considered ethical. Three further themes, ‘preserving dignity and privacy’, ‘managing emotional distress’, and ‘providing equitable access’ to virtual visiting technologies, highlight how virtual visits might exacerbate ethical issues related to family communications. Conclusion Virtual visiting may potentially both ameliorate and exacerbate aspects of ethical healthcare delivery for ICU patients and family members. ICU team members should consider unique ethical considerations related to using virtual visiting. We recommend virtual communications skills training for staff and advocate for the use of easily accessible educational resources for families who wish to visit critically unwell patients remotely. (shrink)

This meditation is a series of reflections about some milestones along my philosophical journey that concern universals, universal definitions, claims to universal moral principles, and universal dialogue. It begins with a focus on the Socratic search for universal definitions of general terms; and it continues with a look at the way my discovery of non-Euclidean geometries began to challenge my attitude toward the possibility of universal definitions of all general terms. Along the way I (...) bring out how Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblances” added to this challenge. The meditation continues with reflections on Kant’s attempts to make a case for a universal and unconditional moral imperative. Following this I sketch a counter-case that the concrete human being gets lost in a haze of Kantian abstraction. These reflections bring out the clear conceptual linkage between the “abstract universal” and the “external relation” as canons ofinterpretation.The meditation then makes a shift to some later milestones on my journey, beginning with reflection on the “concrete universal” and the “internal relation” as alternative canons of interpretation. I try to illustrate how Marx critically appropriated Hegel’s view of these canons via discussion of Marx’s notion of “praxis;” and then go on to adopt these canons of interpretation throughout the rest of the meditation. Employing these canons of interpretation, and with Aristotle’s very broad understanding of the term “politics” in mind, I construe universal dialogue to be a mode of discourse oriented toward the development of a new “politics of the global village” that could cultivate the practice of concretely relating to the other person as a person. Inasmuch as Aristotle construed “politics” as involving a developed ethics as well as a “science of society” , the meditation proceeds with a preliminary sketch of these two dimensions of a new “politics of the global village.”My meditation goes on to suggest a fundamental ethical principle that could be concretely and universally adopted by all people, and that could guide universal dialogue. The meditation continues with a sketch of a philosophical reconstruction of a humanistic Marxist “science of society,” and integrates the fundamental ethical principle with it. This sketch is basically a philosophical clarification of Marx’s theory of cultural evolution that brings into play the key role of the concrete universal and the internal relation as fundamental canons of interpretation. The meditation concludes with an argument that universal dialogue on the part of a very wide spectrum of ordinary people, as well as specialists, is the sine qua non for any hope of transforming the secular basis of human societies in the direction of social justice, as all of humanity faces the daunting crises that loom throughout planet Earth. (shrink)

Reducing disparities in health for racial and ethnic minorities has been a focus for US public health since the Heckler Report. Yet, a majority of racial and ethnic minorities in the US continue to have lower life expectancies and are more susceptible to poorer health outcomes compared to their white counterparts. Improvements in public health have been thwarted by ideological differences and structural restraints that necessitate an alternative method aimed at reorienting ethical discourse and guiding the public health (...) as an institution. Informed by a neo-Aristotelian concept of justice and the good life explicated through the Catholic social tradition, a new framework will enable public health to more wholly achieve its aim in the service of the populations that continue to be marginalized. (shrink)