The aim in this article is to widen the understanding of the significance of morality in the Norwegian social formation by comparing it with the French and the American case. After the introductory discussion of the new sociology of morality, previous findings from a study of the Norwegian middle class are reported. A short presentation of republicanism in France and Americanism in USA is followed by an analysis of the cultural and structural peculiarities of the Norwegian case, arguing that the (...) content of the Norwegian middle class morality should be seen in light of the egalitarian tradition. Finally, by way of comparison the article points to possible ways the different configuration of values might be transferred institutionally. (shrink)

One of the most important roles of schools is to enable students to become good citizens, capable of participating in the public affairs of society. However, the term ‘good citizens’ evokes different interpretations and definitions in different value systems. Using the methods of quantitative content analysis and narrative analysis, this paper aims to identify the dominant moral values of a good citizen that are conveyed by Malaysian moral education textbooks. The findings demonstrate that ‘responsibility’ is the dominant (...) value for shaping a good citizen in Malaysia. The value of responsibility in the textbooks embraces not only the meanings of self-obligation and accountability, but responsibility is also defined as an individual's sense of self-discipline in their behaviour that enables them to avoid conflict and strive for harmonious social order. The other important values are “Respect”, “Helpful”, “Hard-working” and “Caring”. This study provides an example of how a multi-ethnic nation state like Malaysia promotes these moral values through its educational curriculum, for political legitimacy and forging national unity. (shrink)

An empirical study using two ethics-related and three sales force outcome variables was conducted in Taiwan and compared to an existing U.S. sample. Across the two national cultures, individual perceptions of corporate ethics appears to be a more direct determinant of organizational commitment than individual moral values. Differences between the two national cultures were found in ethics perception as it relates to moral values, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. Explanations for the differences are discussed.

The problem of self-knowledge, originally ethnic, and then national, always excited and continues to worry humanity. At different times, she was sharper, then she calmed down, then stepped forward, then she became one in line with other issues of political, economic and social life. But this problem was inevitable. It was one of the sources of the spirit and activities of the people.

This paper is a review of the 18th National Ethics Conference that took place in November 2022 and was organized by the Department of Ethical Studies of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The aim of this review is to give publicity to the event by informing of the thematic panels, the titles of the reports and the names of the researchers who participated.

The Global Economic Ethic Manifesto (" Manifesto") is a moral framework/code of conduct which is both interactive and interdependent with the economic function of the main institutions of the economic system: markets, governments, civil society, and supranational organizations, which lays out a common fundamental vision of what is legitimate, just, and fair in economic activities. The Manifesto includes five universally accepted principles and values: the principle of humanity; the basic values of non-violence and respect for life; the (...) basic values of justice and humanity; the basic values of honesty and tolerance; and the basic values of mutual esteem and partnership. We posit that the Manifesto provides an ethical foundation for explicitly assisting multinational enterprise's (" MNE") executive management and boards of directors to meet the moral failures criticisms associated with the expansion of global capitalism, and similarly how the U. N. Global Compact (" Compact") is focused on addressing complimentary market and institutional failures. In this article, we argue how the Compact and the Manifesto complement each other, explaining how the policies and guidelines of the Compact can now be implemented at the organizational/individual level through a comprehensive human resource management (HRM) plan supporting the ethical framework of the Manifesto. Finally, we have described how the Manifesto completes a comprehensive managerial framework (consisting of both the Compact and the Manifesto) for what we term an "MNE Moral Values-Based Corporate Governance Model." Ultimately, further research is needed in understanding how much impact external and internal influences make on creating a sustainable ethical culture in MNEs. (shrink)

A pathbreaking new study of women and morality How do people decide what is "good" and what is "bad"? How does a society set moral guidelines -- and what happens when the behavior of various groups differs from these guidelines? Martha Saxton tackles these and other fascinating issues in Being Good , her history of the moral values prescribed for women in early America. Saxton begins by examining seventeenth-century Boston, then moves on to eighteenth-century Virginia and nineteenth-century (...) St. Louis. Studying women throughout the life cycle -- girls, young unmarried women, young wives and mothers, older widows -- through their diaries and personal papers, she also studies the variations due to different ethnicities and backgrounds. In all three cases, she is able to show how the values of one group conflicted with or developed in opposition to those of another. And, as the women's testimonies make clear, the emotional styles associated with different value systems varied. A history of American women's moral life thus gives us a history of women's emotional life as well. In lively and penetrating prose, Saxton argues that women's morals changed from the days of early colonization to the days of westward expansion, as women became at once less confined and less revered by their men -- and explores how these changes both reflected and affected trends in the nation at large. (shrink)

This comparative field study evaluated the moral reasoning used by U.S. and Belizean business students in resolving business-related moral dilemmas. The Belizeans, citizens of a less-developed country with Western heritage and a values-based education system, revolved the dilemmas using higher stages of moral judgment than did the U.S. business students.

Performance is increasingly important to the poet, which is evidenced by the growing numbers of videos and audio recordings online including YouTube, the National Poetry library, and Poetry Archive. As a result, there are greater opportunities to engage with poets reading their own work and consequently, there is a need to move away from thinking of poetry as primary something that takes shape on the page. Furthermore, by refocusing attention to poetry as an oral artform, in particular to poetry (...) performance, different ways of understanding the value of poetry come to the fore. The live poetry performance, I argue, offers an attempt to reclaim the personal individual expression of language in contemporary society and demands attention by the audience because of the role of voice and body in the performance. Through awareness of ‘uniqueness of voice,’ the performed poem becomes a site of collective meaning making with individual identity intact as a shared endeavour between performer and audience, and necessarily resists appropriation (in the sense that the words experienced cannot be divorced from the performer or the performance space to serve as a proxy for meaning elsewhere). This chapter therefore makes an argument for the need to engage with spoken word and performance poetry in the live performance space. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explore the importance of ethics education for senior military officers with responsibilities at the strategic level of government. One problem, as I see it, is that senior commanders might demand “ethics” from their soldiers but then they are themselves primarily informed by a “morally skeptical viewpoint” (in the form of political realism). I argue that ethics are more than a matter of personal behavior alone: the ethical position of an armed service is a matter of the (...) collective responsibility of the people who constitute it, and senior military officers, having authority to give the orders, have a particularly important role. First, I discuss the continued prominence of a neorealist mindset in strategic thinking. Neorealist theory assumes that ethics is a largely irrelevant concern for strategic decision-makers. In contrast, I argue that consideration of moral values should be at the center of strategic theory and practice. Then, in the second section, I explore the “professional ethics” of senior military officers in order to develop an appreciation of the shared values and expectations regarding required conduct within any professional military service. I argue that senior military leaders should be concerned with what it means to be “good” and that this concept of the good can, and should, be applied across cultures and national boundaries. In the final section, I examine armed conflict and briefly discuss the moral reasoning involved to justify deliberate killing and destruction. I conclude that senior military officers require an understanding of sound moral reasoning to implement effective strategy. (shrink)

The author points out that the moral condemnation of “nationalism” that is common in contemporary Anglo-Saxon literature does not hold up once we subject it to historical and, by extension, sociolinguistic criticism. This term, originally nebulous and confusing, has become meaningless as a result of forgetting that it is the designation of the relationship of an individual (or social group) to the entity of a nation, an entity that is the result of the empirically well grasped historical process of (...) nation formation under conditions that were specifically European. This circumstance is especially important in the case of the category “small nation”, by which the author means those nations whose formation took place in the form of a national movement – a purposeful effort to acquire all relevant attributes of a nation for one’s own ethnic community. This movement, in its scholarly and agitational phase, was based on a selfless effort to develop and ennoble the nation as an abstract community of cultural values and should be designated by the term “patriotism” and possibly its translations into (some) central European languages, which were and are used with a morally positive connotation. The pejorative label “nationalism” is justified only where the national movement has progressed to its mass phase, when a substantial part, if not most, of the members of the ethnic group have identified with the nation. Since then, it has been necessary to talk about the nation in a dual position. Not only in the position of an abstract community of values but also in the position of “sociological fact”, where it also acquired the morally ambivalent nature of the struggle for power. This ambivalence – the tension between altruism and egoism – is still preserved today even where the national interest is discussed. (shrink)

This paper will consider the role of schools, as a particular moral habitat in the formation of moral virtues and how the inculcation of a comprehensive private moral system of beliefs, values and practices leads to public values in a multicultural, pluralist society. It is argued that the formation of good persons ensures the formation of good citizens and that governments should therefore support good moral education rather than seek to impose national public (...) values or to concentrate on developing good citizens only. The recognition that moral values are learnt within particular private moral systems of values, that it is these on which common public values rely for support and that there are a variety of such comprehensive private moral systems also means that a variety of schools need to be supported. One condition which such schools need to fulfil is that the comprehensive private moral system of beliefs which they inculcate in their students is based on a recognition of the universal applicability of the moral principles that they endorse. (shrink)

We surveyed the approaches of 661 geneticists in 18 nations to 14 clinical cases and asked them to give their ethical reasons for choosing these approaches. Patient autonomy was the dominant value in clinical decision-making, with 59% of responses, followed by non-maleficence (20%), beneficence (11%) and justice (5%). In all, 39% described the consequences of their actions, 26% mentioned conflicts of interest between different parties and 72% placed patient welfare above the welfare of others. The U.S., Canada, Sweden, and U.K. (...) led in responses favoring autonomy. There were substantial international differences in moral reasoning. Gender differences in responses reflected women's greater attention to relationships and supported feminist ethical theories. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to prove the thesis that the attempts to transpose the cultural differentiation into the social and economical universalism and globalism must lead to repressive psychosocial totalitarianism on a large scale. Modern human sciences and politics tend to classify the individual in respect to his adaptive efficiency in interactive relation with programmed environment and to qualify him according to given imposed criteria of social functionalism. The correctly socialized individual is expected to be an exchangeable (...) functional unit assessed according to its usefulness in performing a set of particular tasks, despite his cultural background being considered as a second-rate factor, which may affect the social acceptance and correctness of his behavior. However, no community is an exact representation of society because it is held together not by functions but by the values aswell as the forms of their actualization and implementation into the common organization and their way of life. The community is not a contract upon which society is based. The identity of the individual must not be removed from the culture of the community in which he lives and from its constitutive values. It is also rooted in the past and history of striving for self-determination and cultural as well as personal subjectivity. Without these significant cultural and historical components the individual identity is nothing but an operational, programmable algorithm of functional living unit assigned to perform short-term utilitarian tasks. This approach stands in contradiction to the Aristotelian concept of wellbeing and happiness considered as striving for the common good of spiritual values by individuals as well as by human communities. Any extensive and effective civilization neglecting the higher values of moral, symbolic and religious sense of the individual, must face totalitarianism or extinction. (shrink)

From over 2000 years ago the ideal expressed in the Hippocratic Oath has encouraged doctors never knowingly to do harm: primum non nocere. Over 25 years ago the management writer Peter Drucker proposed it as the basis of a management ethic, ‘the right rule for the ethics managers need, the ethics of responsibility’.1 He argued then that the rule had wide scope encompassing for instance executive compensation, management rhetoric and the management of business impacts. In 2000 the United Nations Global (...) Compact embodied a Principle 7 enjoining ‘a precautionary approach to environmental challenges’ as defined in Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration. But what can such precautionary injunctions mean in practice? And what of conflicts with other values? Robin Attfield lays out the key questions he argues need to be asked about the Precautionary Principle if it is to be taken seriously and acted upon soundly. His focus is on the management of vulnerable resources — specifically planetary ecosystems — with whose management knowingly or otherwise we are all concerned. (shrink)

The term 'Asian values' became popular in the political discourse in the 1980s and 1990s. The most vocal proponents of Asian values are Singapore s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Mahathir and their deputies and government officials, as well as post-Tiananmen Chinese leaders. Most notable of all these three strands of the Asian values debate is the 'Singapore School', which 'comprises leaders who have articulated a defence of the Singapore regime, either in their personal or official capacities'. (...) This article discusses the origins and philosophical underpinnings of 'Asian values' in the Singapore context and its relationship to civics education. First, it provides the historical context for the interest in Confucianism and Asian Values. It then looks at the role and use of Confucianism and Asian Values in Asia, before discussing the case of Singapore and Asian values. I explore the interconnections between changes in history, civics and social studies curricula, and the politics of the 'Asian Values' discourse in Singapore which underpins these curricula. At the heart of the issue was the states attempt to forge and articulate a Singaporean identity, and the role of citizenship/moral education in attaining this elusive nation building goal. (shrink)

The analytical tension between legal norms, moral values, and national interests seems no uncharted territory in political science, but has found very little interest in legal academia. For lawyers, moral values and national interests are largely “unknowns,” dealt with by other disciplines. Looking a bit deeper, the picture becomes more nuanced, however. As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay argues that norms, (...) class='Hi'>values, and interests are not different universes of legal normativity, morality, and specific interests, but are interrelated concepts. Values clearly influence norms and often underpin them, while seemingly concrete norms (rules) are themselves often fragile constructs trying to balance competing interests. Value systems are quite diverse within societies, and this is even truer for interests; each society is a dynamic system of social interaction where conflicting interests are constantly playing out. In a way, underlying conflicts of values and interests are constantly being renegotiated in the legal system, with the norms enshrined in the text of statutes and treaties serving to constitute transitory reference points. (shrink)

In recent years, the National Crime Records Bureau recommendation is that the growth rate of crime against women has skyrocketed in India, even higher than the population growth rate. According to lawyer, Kamlesh Vaswani, the commercial exploitation of coital activity paramount in pornography is the result of crimes against women, and fills perverse traits in the roots of society. Following that, he filed a petition (2013) in the Honourable Supreme Court to blanket ban pornography with the aim of diluting (...) the subordination of women and the crimes against women in society. Taking this into consideration, I argue that the Vaswani petition draws back the issue of twentieth century Western political and philosophical debate on pornography which triggers one of the moot problems of moral legislation—whether the state should be neutral or not towards individuals’ preferences, merits, desires, and the status to live well. This article focuses on whether this discourse has any relevance in the Indian value system. In this article, through the comparison between Indian and Western values, I make an attempt to analyse the moot problem of moral legislation which is bridging the gap between public and private morality for the well-being of women as well as our society. (shrink)

This chapter considers how some international ethical matters might be approached differently in the English-speaking literature if values salient in sub-Saharan Africa were taken seriously. Specifically, after pointing out how indigenous values in this part of the world tend to prescribe relating communally, this chapter articulates a moral-philosophical interpretation of communal relationship and brings out what such an ethic entails for certain aspects of globalization, political power, foreign relations, and criminal justice. The chapter suggests that the implications (...) of a communal ethic are prima facie plausible and often prescribe changes to the status quo. Lacking the space to systematically defend communion as a fundamental value, the chapter nonetheless urges normative theorists of international politics not to neglect it, and it makes realistic recommendations for the African Union, trade organizations, diplomats, and other agents in a position to influence global policy. (Reprints some parts of 'Harmonizing Global Ethics in the Future' [Journal of Global Ethics, 2014], but with a strict focus on Africa's, excluding China's, ethical contributions to global matters.). (shrink)

The key to a perspicuous overview of axiology is the realization that all values arise from life. This chapter provides a brief overview of von Wright's categories, or ‘varieties’, of goodness. Medical goodness is the most elemental variety of natural value and disvalue. Any language‐using creature that has the skills to make and to use tools, instruments, and other artefacts is going to need the concepts of artefactual goodness and its subcategory of instrumental goodness. Morality is essentially a social (...) phenomenon – it is an aspect of the form of life of a community. In evolved societies, it overlaps with and fades into law, into social mores or small morals, and into individual critical morality. Virtue, or moral goodness, as well as the moral virtues, which are moral character traits, are attributes of social beings who are, and who identify themselves as being, members of a community, people, or nation. (shrink)

The essays in this collection, spanning 1925 to 1970, confirm Aurel Kolnai's place as one of the great conservative theorists of the twentieth century. Kolnai carefully analyzes the leading intellectual positions and thinkers of his day, the dominant social movements, and the prevailing moral influences--psychoanalysis, fascism, and National Socialism. He documents how they run counter to the architecture of civilization. Kolnai is relatively unknown outside philosophical circles, but Politics, Values, and National Socialism provides an overview of (...) his moral philosophy. In most moral philosophy books one finds pages devoted to the major theories of ethics. This volume is different. It seeks to address the larger moral question of what kind of thought works against morality, and by implication, how one can defend morality. Eager to protect "the surviving islands of Liberal Civilization," Kolnai's concern is really one of theory. He shows that much of what passes for moral theory is subversive of moral order. All who think that totalitarianism is a permanent threat, and who suspect that ideas can quickly be dangerously distorted in times of social unrest, will find plenty of clarifying ideas in this volume. (shrink)

School leaders are expected to act with integrity, but values are always contested: one person’s ‘moral purpose’ is not the same as another’s. Researchers have explored these issues from different angles. One approach focusses on individual leaders, seeking to understand how their values inform their practice. Other work highlights that individual values are only part of the story: values are embedded within professional norms and organisational cultures, while policy and governance frameworks serve to structure and (...) constrain individual agency, particularly in marketised and performative systems. This paper draws on examples from recent research in England to argue that leadership responses to structural constraints should be seen on a spectrum in terms of how far they reflect individual agency and values, proposing four possible categories – ‘toxic leadership’, ‘pragmatic compliance’, ‘principled infidelity’ and ‘authentic agency’. It also discusses the question of how values operate at locality and national levels as well as within individual schools and draws the analysis together into a conceptual frame. (shrink)

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is increasingly a diseaseof the disadvantaged, a destroyer of nations,and a threat to global security and well-being.But this need not be so: the world has thescientific knowledge, technologicalinnovations, and financial resources tosignificantly reduce the spread and sufferingcaused by the disease. This paper argues thatthe wealthy nations of the world, led by theUnited States, have a moral obligation to offermuch greater assistance to developing countrieswhere the epidemic is most severe. UsingZimbabwe as a case study, this essay examinesthe (...) immediate and underlying factors behind theepidemic in order to make realistic andaffordable policy recommendations that includenew investments in global health care, debtrelief, and long-term economic development. Bydemonstrating our ability to dramaticallyaffect the future course and consequences ofthis unprecedented epidemic, the paperconcludes that greater action is not only inthe interest of public health, but is also amoral imperative. By investing the necessaryresources to improve public health and toreduce global poverty, we promote and extendthe fundamental rights and values that weprofess to hold dear. (shrink)

Globalization has the potential to create a network society where “there is a common cultural code of values that forms the glue of the network”. This article explores if common cultural codes of values are emerging in the public relations industry by examining the codes of ethics of 41 professional public relations associations across the world. The method for the analysis was Centering Resonance Analysis, a textual analysis methodology, that uses linguistics theory to assess main concepts, their influence, (...) and their interrelationships. The research team found that six dominant themes emerged from the codes of ethics of professional communication associations: professionalism, advocacy, moral standards, clients’ interests, expertise, and relationships. The findings suggest that global values that will influence organizational relationships with publics are emerging in professional communication practice. (shrink)

This paper will consider the role of schools, as a particular moral habitat in the formation of moral virtues and how the inculcation of a comprehensive private moral system of beliefs, values and practices leads to public values in a multicultural, pluralist society. It is argued that the formation of good persons ensures the formation of good citizens and that governments should therefore support good moral education rather than seek to impose national public (...) values or to concentrate on developing good citizens only. The recognition that moral values are learnt within particular private moral systems of values, that it is these on which common public values rely for support and that there are a variety of such comprehensive private moral systems also means that a variety of schools need to be supported. One condition which such schools need to fulfil is that the comprehensive private moral system of beliefs which they inculcate in their students is based on a recognition of the universal applicability of the moral principles that they endorse. (shrink)

The secular character of the Nigerian state should not impede collaboration between the Roman Catholic Schools Management Board and the Government of Cross River State (Nigeria) in the area of religious education. Based on the above claim, this paper is an exercise in content analysis of The Catholic School{\\ial is, the document regulating Catholic principles of education in schools) and Religion and National Values: Primary 1- 5(text on curricular contents of religious education at the primary school level in (...) Nigeria) in view of highlighting its implications for religious education. This work is focused on bringing out some points of convergence and divergence, if any, in these two documents. Content analysis technique is the modus operandi used in this research paper. The research findings of this paper show that Catholic primary schools can adopt the curriculum for religious education but should be weary of some of its doctrinally watered-down contents. (shrink)

When scientists consider the interaction of science and value judgments, debates often occur. When public policy grows out of science, disagreements between scientists can become even more spirited. This paper examines the case of nutrition policy in the United States, which has been both at the interface between agriculture and medicine and the object of serious discord concerned with the strength and validity of the scientific evidence and the responsibility for action. The development of indirect intervention policies, designed to educate (...) and inform the public on diet and health, is traced as a practical demonstration of the effects of involvements of nutritional scientists of different disciplines and philosophic bents. Controversies centered mainly on the issues of diet and coronary heart disease and of diet and cancer in nutritional guidelines for Americans and the recommended dietary allowances. But the arguments turned on a complex web of values and interests as well as scientific questions. A remarkable turnaround by animal agriculture and its scientific support occurred, changing from a defensive, rightist stance to one that appears to recognize a moral responsibility to the public health. The convincing point was likely the changing market. Nutritional scientists, however, remained divided on the issue of whether a public health strategy keyed to public education should replace a strategy to identify persons of high risk and modify the risk by treatment. Our analysis suggests that the tension between libertarian and utilitarian social values of scientists is at least as important as disagreements relative to validity and strengths of the scientific evidence. (shrink)

In Common Values, now with a new preface, Bok writes eloquently and clearly while combining moral theory with practical ethics, demonstrating how moral values apply to all facets of life—personal, professional, domestic, and international. Drawing on a great deal of historical material, Bok also includes in her examination consideration of the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights; the World Parliament of Religions; the publication of Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II's proclamation on morality; and (...) the International Commission of Global Governance. Bok's defense of shared morality addresses a crucial topic for our time. (shrink)

In this article, I trace the politics of shame in the context of the problematization of women’s bodies as markers of sexual immorality in modern Ireland. I argue that the post-Independence project of national identity formation established women as bearers of virtue and purity and that sexual transgression threatening this new identity came to be severely punished. By hiding women, children, and all those deemed to be dangerous to national self-representations of purity, the Irish state, supported by Catholic (...) moral values and teaching, physically removed its embodied instances of national shame through a system of mass institutionalization. Just as shame entails the covering of one’s blemishes, so the shaming of women deemed to be deviant by church and state involved their covering via incarceration in Magdalen laundries, among other institutions. By assessing recent events highlighted by inquiries into Irish institutions—Magdalen laundries, reformatory and industrial schools, and soon mother and baby homes—in terms of the politics of shame, this article aims to shed light on the pervasiveness of institutionalization in Ireland and the complex relationship between said institutions, gender, sexuality, and nation building in the early decades of the Irish state. (shrink)

The paper presents a comprehensive survey and critique of literature on human values and ethics in business across diverse cultures. According to the author, the key issue in this discourse is not about whose values and morality, but about what values and morality. The author argues for a holistic paradigm in this discourse, grounded in deep philosophy and drawing upon the spiritual values of humanism. The consumerist, market economy Western models of ethics cannot be the only (...) answer to values issues surfacing in the wake of increasing economic globalization. The most exciting thing about international business is that it offers the opportunity to discover the human values that resonate through all cultures.1 What is more ethical—considering all nations as if they were same or accepting different standards of behaviour in different contexts? (shrink)

BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, national governments took restrictive measures, such as a visitors ban, prohibition of group activities and quarantine, to protect nursing home residents against infections. As ‘safety’ prevailed, residents and close relatives had no choice but to accept the restrictions. Their perspectives are relevant because the policies had a major impact on them, but they were excluded from the policy decisions. In this study we looked into the moral attitudes of residents, close relatives and (...) volunteers regarding the restrictions in retrospect, and what moral lessons they considered important.MethodsWe conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with residents and close relatives and one focus group meeting with volunteers working in nursing homes. Data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed inductively. Subsequently, three Socratic dialogue meetings with residents, close relatives and volunteers were organized in which first analysis outcomes were discussed and dialogues were fostered into moral lessons for future pandemics. Outcomes were combined with moral theory following an empirical bioethics design. ResultsCritical perspectives regarding the COVID-19 restrictions grew in time. Various moral values were compromised and steered moral lessons for our future. The participants recognized three moral lessons as most important. First, constructing tailored (well-balanced) solutions in practice is desirable. Second, proper recognition is needed for the caring role that close relatives fulfill in practice. Third, a responsive power distribution should be in place that includes all stakeholder perspectives who are affected by the restrictions. DiscussionComparing the results with moral theory strengthens the plea for inclusion of all stakeholder groups in decision-making processes. To further concretize the moral lessons, tailored solutions can be realized with the use of moral case deliberations. Proper recognition includes actions addressing moral repair and including counter-stories in the debate. Responsive power distribution starts with providing clear and trustworthy information and including all perspectives. (shrink)

Liberal nationalists have been trying to argue that a suitably sanitized version of nationalism—namely, one that respects and embodies liberal values—is not only morally defensible, but also of great moral value, especially on grounds liberals should find very appealing. Although there are plausible aspects to the idea and some compelling arguments are offered in defense of this position, one area still proves to be a point of considerable vulnerability for this project and that is the issue of what, (...) according to the liberal nationalists, we owe both members of our nation, our co-nationals, and what we owe those who are not members of our nation. It is here that we see the project still has some distance to go if a version of liberal nationalism is, indeed, to be morally defensible. In this paper I examine leading liberal nationalist accounts of our obligations to co-nationals and non-nationals. I argue that liberal nationalists have not yet given us an adequate account of our obligations to non-nationals for a number of reasons. For instance, on the issue of the priority we may give co-nationals' interests over non-nationals', the theorists' view show significant tension, they seem to be confused about what their positions entail, the views are unhelpful, ad hoc, or the positions are quite unclear. Liberal nationalists also have a misleading impression that their positions better capture the relation between personal identity and duty, but this turns out to be false. Other defects with their specific projects are highlighted. I go on to offer a more promising method for determining our obligations to non-nationals. Rather than this alternative precluding any scope for nationalism, it actually makes clearer to us how there might be some defensible space for nationalism once our obligations to put in place appropriate institutions and sets of rules have been fulfilled. (shrink)

Is age discrimination ethically objectionable? One puzzle is that we sometimes assume that the target of both age discrimination and ageism must be older people, yet in poorer nations, older people are generally shown more respect. This article explores the ethical question. It looks first at ethical arguments favoring age discrimination toward younger people in low‐income, less industrialized countries of the global South, using sub‐Saharan Africa as an illustration. It contrasts these with arguments favoring age discrimination toward older people in (...) high‐income, more industrialized countries of the global North, particularly the United States and United Kingdom. Finally, it considers what role, if any, differences in life expectancy, infant and child mortality, and prospects for healthy lives should play in the moral embrace of a particular view by a community. It argues that there can be reasons to favor different types of discrimination in different parts of the world. (shrink)

Books have their origins in conversations and seek to extend and expand those conversations over time and with different audiences. The conversations that have culminated in this book were initially stimulated through a research project at The Hastings Center on the role of religious voices in the professional fields of bioethical inquiry. Those professional conversations have continued throughout my academic career as a member of various institutional ethics committees, organizational ethics task forces, and in local, state, and national public (...) policy settings. The professional context of bioethics conversations can sometimes miss the richness of conversations that occur in the classroom and with various communities, including family members, friends, and religious and civic communities. These conversations provide an experiential depth, a groundedness in the lives and stories of persons, which augments and corrects the professionalized perspectives. I have been particularly fortunate and appreciative of opportunities to bridge the academic and professional with the personalized and communal through conversations about the ethical commitments and moral culture cultivated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). I was invited to develop an overview essay on "Bioethics in Mormonism" for the professional reference work, Encyclopedia of Bioethics (3rd ed., 2004), and some years later received my first invitation to make a presentation on "LDS Ethics" in an academic setting at the University of Virginia. This book is the outgrowth of these many conversations and seeks to advance my communal bridging. My aim in this book is to begin bridging these various intersections between the LDS religious community and its moral culture, the professional fields of bioethics, and practical decision-making. This work seeks to be a catalyst for expanding discourse within the interdisciplinary field of Mormon studies to include ethics and bioethics. Ethics has not been a well-developed area in Mormon studies, in contrast to studies in LDS history, theology, or literature. To remedy this oversight, I present a substantive interpretation of the sources, theological background, and moral principles of LDS ethics. The historical narratives and conceptual intertwining I offer of both bioethics and of LDS moral culture is intended to complement and expand the realm of Mormon studies. A further objective is to create opportunities for reciprocal dialogues between the bioethics community and LDS scholarship. This conversation has yet to occur within academic disciplines, professional communities, or in public policy deliberations. My exposition, analysis, and critiques will intertwine and contextualize LDS moral values and health care practices within the ethical inquiry undertaken in the broader professional scholarship of bioethics. My arguments will disclose some points of common ground as well as areas of divergence towards the end of establishing the LDS faith tradition as a community of moral discourse for the bioethics field and the healing professions (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc.) it informs. My claim is that given its emerging cultural prominence, LDS ethical scholarship should engage in bioethical literacy and bioethics should be LDS-literate. I am also engaged in an effort to initiate more reflective dialogues regarding LDS ethics and moral culture among LDS scholars, LDS health care professionals, and the interested general LDS reader. The focus of the book on the interrelationship of religion, ethics, medicine, and health care should present for these various audiences new opportunities for mindful reflection and creative scholarship on the ethical implications of faith commitments, the responsibilities of the healing professions, and religious dimensions of public policy and public bioethics. A religious community that is formed through narratives and practices of covenantal commitments of love of neighbor needs to have a robust discourse about its ethical character. I have understood my scholarship in biomedical ethics and in religious ethics through a linking metaphor of my moral culture, of medicine, and the law, of bearing witness. The witness offers moral realities, moral truths about the way things are, vocalizes and embodies moral experience, and prophetically critiques the hypocrisies of the powerful and their oppression of the vulnerable by offering a new story, a re-storying, of tradition and conventional practice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this paper we examine how ethical values contribute to national economic prosperity. We extend the concept of an ethical wealth of nations first introduced by Donaldson in which he proposed four categories of ethical values—fairer distribution of goods, better government, ingrained social cooperation, and inculcation of economic duties—that can drive economic performance, but only if citizens ascribe “intrinsic value” to them independent of their economic interests. Our analysis draws on institutional economics and sociology research to show (...) that if ethical values are to drive economic performance, they must also be supported by the institutional fabric of the nation. We embed an expanded set of ethical values in a set of democratic, free market and civil society institutions spanning three sectors of society—political, economic and cultural respectively. We conclude by discussing the implications of our institutional framework for moral education. (shrink)

In this informed and comprehensive assessment of current issues in international policies, Kenneth W. Thompson addresses the role that traditions and values play in shaping change and in helping us to understand its implications. He challenges the idea that the enormous changes in contemporary national and international life have rendered the consideration of traditions and values obsolete. Thompson’s purpose is to illuminate the problems we face and to set forth general principles directed toward an informing theory on (...) traditions and values as they affect politics and diplomacy, while at the same time warning of the pitfalls and limitations of theory. In the first section of this book, Thompson draws on classical and Judaeo-Christian traditions in defining the relationship between philosophy, religion, and politics. He then examines the application of abstract values to such political realities as national interest, and goes on to consider the question of moral values in international diplomacy and politics. In a series of case studies, Thompson reflects on human rights, disarmament and arms control, and human survival. Maintaining that the implementation of traditions and values is sometimes uniquely the task of the American presidency, he studies the administrations of four postwar presidents—Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon—in the light of the executives’ attitudes toward ethics and politics. Finally, Thompson considers the implications of national decline and the breakdown of international order for the future of the United States. The vast knowledge of international affairs and the literature of politics that Kenneth W. Thompson brings to this timely and reflective books makes it exceptionally readable as well as intellectually challenging. (shrink)

A number of philosophers argue that the moral value of national identity is sufficient to justify at least a prima facie right of a national community to create its own independent, sovereign state. In the literature, this argument is commonly referred to as the identity argument. In this paper, I consider whether the identity argument successfully proves that a national group is entitled to a state of its own. To do so, I first explain three important (...) steps in the argument and then consider whether they lead to the desired conclusion. My examination reveals that the identity argument relies on the Optimal Protection Principle; however, this principle does not apply to the case of a national community. As a result, the identity argument fails to justify even a prima facie right of a national community to establish its own state. (shrink)

Liberal nationalists have been trying to argue that a suitably sanitized version of nationalism - namely, one that respects and embodies liberal values - is not only morally defensible, but also of great moral value, especially on grounds liberals should find very appealing. Although there are plausible aspects to the idea and some compelling arguments are offered in defense of this position, one area still proves to be a point of considerable vulnerability for this project and that is (...) the issue of what, according to the liberal nationalists, we owe both members of our nation, our co-nationals, and what we owe those who are not members of our nation. It is here that we see the project still has some distance to go if a version of liberal nationalism is, indeed, to be morally defensible. In this paper I examine leading liberal nationalist accounts of our obligations to co-nationals and non-nationals. I argue that liberal nationalists have not yet given us an adequate account of our obligations to non-nationals for a number of reasons. For instance, on the issue of the priority we may give co-nationals' interests over non-nationals', the theorists' view show significant tension, they seem to be confused about what their positions entail, the views are unhelpful, ad hoc, or the positions are quite unclear. Liberal nationalists also have a misleading impression that their positions better capture the relation between personal identity and duty, but this turns out to be false. Other defects with their specific projects are highlighted. I go on to offer a more promising method for determining our obligations to non-nationals. Rather than this alternative precluding any scope for nationalism, it actually makes clearer to us how there might be some defensible space for nationalism once our obligations to put in place appropriate institutions and sets of rules have been fulfilled. (shrink)

Although national identity is valuable in a variety of ways, I argue that its value is not sufficient to justify a group’s right to govern itself, either in the form of an independent, sovereign state or an autonomous, sub-state government. My thesis is somewhat unusual—most philosophers who affirm the value of national identity also endorse the right of a national community to some form of self-government, and most philosophers who deny that a national community has the (...) right to any form of self-government also deny the value of national identity. (shrink)

This study gave a historical account of the contributions of Christianity to the overall development of Nigeria. From the inception of Christianity in Nigeria, it has been inculcating in its adherents’ uncompromised moral values, respect for human life and dignity through adequate education and social tasks. Unfortunately, social critics have constantly but erroneously, underestimated the contributions made by Christian missionary work in Nigeria. Therefore, this research was an attempt to specifically show that Christianity is genuine; it has made (...) great strides in the areas of education, agriculture, healthcare and rural development. Its contribution to national development will be portrayed in this work. Christianity was committed to upholding social justice, equality and people’s welfare, all of which helped a country achieve national development. The purpose of enumerating the contributions of Christianity was to correct the bad impressions which the social critics might have generated. This was also to buttress that nation building was part of the agenda in missionary work in Nigeria. To achieve this aim, a historical approach was used. The findings made clear the fact that Christianity is one popular institution that has greatly influenced many Nigerians positively. Hence, most Nigerians were in love with Christian mission.Contribution: This work corrected the negative impressions which social critics might have generated about Christianity. It buttressed that nation building remained the prime agenda in missionary work in the entire universe. Christianity’s continuous contribution to Nigeria cannot be overemphasised; it is a peaceful religion. (shrink)

The goals of this study are to test a pattern of ethical decision making that predicts ethical intentions of individuals within corporations based primarily on the ethical values embedded in corporate culture, and to see whether that model is generally stable across countries. The survey instrument used scales to measure the effects of corporate ethical values, idealism, and relativism on ethical intentions of Turkish, Thai, and American businesspeople. The samples include practitioner members of the American Marketing Association in (...) the U.S., and full-time businesspeople enrolled in executive MBA programs in Thailand and Turkey. The study is positioned within a fairly new stream that assesses patterns across countries, rather than differences between them, in a way that might be called “culture free.” The results show a generally positive influence between cultural ethical values and ethical intentions. The results also indicate that the positive effect of corporate ethical values on ethical intentions is greater for managers with low idealism and high relativism. We also discuss the implications of our results for managers of international businesses. (shrink)

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights refers to the importance of cultural diversity and pluralism in ethical discourse and care of humanity. The aim of this meta-narrative review is to identify indigenous ethical values pertaining to the Ojibway, Xhosa, and Mayan cultures from peer-reviewed sources and cultural review, and to ascertain if there are shared commonalities. Three main themes were identified, namely illness, healing, and health care choices. Illness was described with (...) a more complex and dynamic picture than from the western view, as illness is not considered to be one dimensional. Healing needs to take place on various levels in order to restore a state of equilibrium between the different spheres. Health care choices were also considered from a multi-level perspective. In all three of the indigenous cultures explored, good decision-making is seen to have occurred when choices are informed by commitments to one’s moral and ethical responsibilities towards the community, nature, and the spirit world. (shrink)

This article argues that use of the concept of ‘political religion’ to describe the radicalized political movements of the twentieth century has again gained currency in recent years as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as the global upsurge of religiously inspired violence and that research with respect to religion proper – what religion is, its role in public life, its evolving reception by ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ – can advance the discussion. The article subsequently offers (...) the author's own research as evidence of the concept's applicability to the case of National Socialism. Analysis focuses, specifically, on a movement in nineteenth century Germany to develop a secular system of ethics, a project that eventually led, ironically and tragically, to the emergence of a new faith in a absolutized ‘collective will’ as the transcendent source of all moral values. The National Socialist movement subsequently co-opted this article of faith, the article argues, by transforming Hitler into a holy medium for the salvific dictates of what became, by the early 1930s, an unimpeachable ‘Volkswille.’. (shrink)

Western society today is less unified by a set of core values than ever before. Undoubtedly, the concept of moral consensus is a difficult one in a liberal, democratic and pluralistic society. But it is imperative to avoid a rigid majoritarianism where sensitive personal values are at stake, as in bioethics. Bioethics has become an influential part of public and professional discussions of health care. It has helped frame issues of moral values and medicine as (...) part of a more general effort to find consensus about some of the most perplexing questions of our time. But why is it thought that a moral consensus is important or that it deserves respect? How does moral consensus acquire legitimacy in a society that includes diverse value systems? How is moral consensus possible and how do small groups help create or distort consensus processes? Written by a medical school professor trained in philosophy, this timely work tackles these questions from philosophical, historical, and social scientific standpoints. It begins by describing the traditional ambivalence about consensus in Western culture as well as the uncertain relationship in modernity between consensus and expertise. After outlining the current bioethical consensus, the book gives philosophical and political analyses of the idea of consensus, then assesses the role of consensus in national ethics commissions and in the ethics committee movement. Moreno constructs an original, naturalistic philosophy of moral consensus, referred to as "bioethical naturalism", and then applies sociology and social psychology to actual consensus processes. The book concludes with an account of bioethics as a consensus-oriented social reform movement. This insightful volume will be essential reading for bioethicists, philosophers, physicians, members of ethics committees, and all those concerned with ethical and social issues in health care. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to study the importance of Pushkin's work in the age of scientific and technological progress, to identify and analyze the moral values that accompany the work and personality of Alexander Pushkin and are particularly relevant to our time. The article discusses the moral values of honor and dignity, the ratio between good and evil, concepts of duty, justice, love and friendship, happiness, freedom, creativity, patriotism, national idea, peoples’ friendship and (...) the problem of preserving Russian language in modern Russia. The article is written through the prism of interpretation of Pushkin’s creativity by Russian philosophers abroad and modern philosophers. The article deals with the problem of using neural networks that make it possible to reproduce the style of A. S. Pushkin. The author concludes about the relevance of the work of A. S. Pushkin in our days. The issues of preserving spirituality, moral values, national identity, and optimistic Renaissance perception of the world, of understanding the beauty of life, remain relevant and in demand in modern age of rapid scientific and technical progress, both in Russia and in the world. (shrink)

Public benefit corporations are National Health Service, that is, state, entities whose function to provide healthcare in discharge of public duties. If we regardvalue as the output of such organisations, it seems logical to connect the values of the organisation to thevalue produced by such organisations. But, on closer examination there are competing underlying logics in play: (1) those based on promoting organisational efficiency and efficacy; and (2) those based on the idea of building service provision around the (...) clinician–patient relationship. Underlying these logics are differing value sets. These clash. Because of the clashing of underlying moral frameworks the connection between values andvalue becomes hard, if not impossible. This paper argues that (1) the clash in these moral frameworks must be addressed by the organisation rather than between individuals or groups of individuals within the organisation; (2) alloying duties within hybrid professionals submerges but does not resolve these conflicts; (3) one approach could be to impose on the organisation itself an ethical imperative to promote, enhance and protect from deterioration the welfare of the patients; (4) a board ethics committee is a possible organisational structure that could transparently and fairly balance clashes within the competing moral frameworks in a way that could reconcile the competing logics and (5) if such conflicts can be better resolved at the organisational level what the organisation must do to achieve its objectives will become clearer because what needs to be valued would naturally emerge connecting values,value and what is valued. (shrink)

Michael Porter argues that some nations manifest a competitive advantage deriving from key elements of their economic structure. Some nations are thus disposed by structure to possess what Porter calls a "competitive advantage of nations" (Porter, 1990). In this paper I examine the prospect of an ethical advantage of nations, and in particular, of a set of advantages that extend far beyond the simple dimension of trust so often discussed. I consider, further, how such a range of ethical features would (...) be structured, and what the implications of those features would be. Three conclusions are reached: 1. Morality may create economic advantages for nations in ways that extend beyond the notion of an idealized market; 2. In order for ethics to drive economic advantage, ethical concepts must rise to the status of intrinsic value; and 3. If claims for national ethical success factors are true, then nations should attend to the issue of moral education. (shrink)

Advocates of active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide argue that a patient’s intractable pain and suffering are a sufficient justification for his life to end if he autonomously so chooses. Others hold that the non-utilization of life-sustaining treatment, the use of pain-relieving medication that may hasten a patient’s death, and palliative sedation may be morally acceptable means of alleviating pain and suffering. How a patient should be cared for when approaching the end of life involves one’s core religious and moral (...) values, particularly concerning whether pain and suffering can have some sort of instrumental value. The author reasons why a patient who is terminally ill can find his suffering valuable for both religious and nonreligious goals. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.2 (Summer 2012): 251–261. (shrink)

Digital humanities research has developed haphazardly, with substantive contributions in some disciplines and only superficial uses in others. It has made almost no inroads in philosophy; for example, of the nearly two million articles, chapters, and books housed at philpapers.org, only sixteen pop up when one searches for ‘digital humanities’. In order to make progress in this field, we demonstrate that a hypothesis-driven method, applied by experts in data-collection, -aggregation, -analysis, and -visualization, yields philosophical fruits. “Call no one happy until (...) they are dead.” “De mortuis nil nisi bonum.” These ancient norms still inform how we speak of the dead. From their beginnings in the nineteenth century, modern obituaries have been both practical and honorary. They are written with two aims: to pay respect to the deceased and to inspire the living to follow in their footsteps. The obituary of William Custis of Virginia exemplifies these aims, say that “it is due to his memory publicly to record his virtues,” and that “There is in the life a noble, independent and honest man, something so worthy of imitation, something that so strongly commends itself to the approbation of the virtuous mind, that his name should not be left to oblivion” (Daily National Intelligencer, 18 November 1838). Likewise, philosophers have emphasized that we can determine what counts as a virtue for a given type of person in a given community by analyzing what people say about the dead (Zagzebski, L. Virtues of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 135). By adhering to norms of praise, admiration, and respect, obituaries reveal what counts as a virtue, value, or constituent of wellbeing (VVC) for a particular type of person in a particular community. -/- One way to explore this insight would be to close-read a small number of obituaries of people from intersecting demographics, crossing dimensions such as gender, age, race, class, educational attainment, veteran status, religion, and location. Another, which we demonstrate in this chapter, is to harness digital humanities resources to distance-read a much larger number of obituaries, extracting both demographic meta-data and first-order content expressive of VVC. We then analyze and visualize this information to establish the structures of VVC associated with different types of people in different communities, arguing that data-science measures such as eigenvector centrality can be used to identify cardinal virtues. We also explain the rudiments of our text- and meta-data mining, our method of aggregating and comparing texts, and our visualization techniques. In so doing, we pave the way for researchers in philosophy and related fields to generate similar analyses and visualizations. (shrink)