Religion and science dialogues that orbit around rational method, knowledge, and truth are often, though not always, contentious. In this article, I suggest a different cluster of gravitational points around which religion and science dialogues might usefully travel: philosophical anthropology, ethics, and love. I propose seeing morality as a natural outgrowth of the human desire to establish and maintain social bonds so as not to experience the condition of being alone. Humans, of all animals, need to feel loved—defined as (...) a compassionate present-with in dynamic dyadic relation such that one experiences the sense of mattering—but that need has an equally natural tendency to be met by creating biased us-and-them distinctions. A “critical” natural ethics, then, is one in which we become aware of and work to undermine our tendency to reify in-group distinctions between “us” and “them.” Religious communities that work intentionally on this can be seen, to some extent, as laboratories of love—or as sites for co-creating knowledge in perilous times. (shrink)

This article presents evidence supporting the claim that ethical reasoning is a skill that can be taught and assessed. We propose a working definition of ethical reasoning as 1) the ability to identify, analyze, and weigh moral aspects of a particular situation, and 2) to make decisions that are informed and warranted by the moral investigation. The evidence consists of a description of an ethical reasoning education program—Ethical Reasoning in Action —designed to increase ethical reasoning skills in a variety of (...) situations and areas of life. ERiA is housed at a public, major comprehensive U.S. university—James Madison University—and assessment of the program focuses on interventions delivered prior to and during orientation for incoming first-year students. Findings indicate that the interventions measurably enhance the ability of undergraduate students to reason ethically. ERiA’s competency-targeted program and positive student learning outcomes offers a promising model for higher education ethics programs seeking to connect classroom learning in ethics to decision-making in everyday life. (shrink)

The early work by Gilbert Harman and John Doris on character and situationism has fostered a vast literature over the past 15 years. Yet despite all this work, there are many important issues which remain largely unexplored. The goal of this paper is to briefly outline eight promising research directions: neglected moral virtues, neglected non-moral virtues, virtue assessment and measurement, replication, non-Aristotelian virtue ethics, positive accounts of character trait possession, prescriptive situationism, and virtue cultivation.

The present collection of essays is devoted to the Christian philosophy of the most prolific and most speculatively ambitious of the Cambridge Origenists, Henry More. Not only did More revere Origen, whom he extolled as a "holy sage" and "that miracle of the Christian world", but he also developed a philosophical system which hinged upon the Origenian notions of universal divine goodness and libertarian human freedom. Throughout his life, More subscribed to the ancient theology of the pre-existence of (...) souls and took issue with the early modern philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes and Baruch de Spinoza. His vision of God's goodness, experienced in his early school years at Eton, became the cornerstone of an Origenist rationalism which envisaged an extended world animated by divine thought and inhabited by self-moving rational agents. More's philosophy is the crowning attainment of the early modern rediscovery of Origen as well as a neglected major rationalist system in its own right which went on to exert decisive influence upon all subsequent western metaphysics. The essays collected in the first part provide a detailed introduction to More's voluminous writings. After a comprehensive general overview of his metaphysical and ethical system, the essays expound More's historical context and his philosophical development from his early poetry in the 1640s to his mature philosophical and theological prose works of the 50s, 60s and 70s. In addition, the reception of More and Origen in the later Cambridge Origenists and in Isaac Newton is outlined. The second part contains several excerpts from More's influential Latin works first translated into English by the editor. (shrink)

Economics is often believed to be a `value-free' discipline, and even an `a-moral' one. My aim is to demonstrate that homo œconomicus can recover his ethical nature if the philosophical roots of contemporary economics are laid bare. This, however, requires us to look for an alternative foundation for the idea of `social order,' a foundation which economics is ill-equipped to provide because of its exclusive focus on calculative rationality. But a new ethical perspective on homo œconomicus and on the manner (...) in which he chooses his actions is possible. My aim here is to make this new perspective explicit.Two claims lie at the heart of this paper. The first claim is that economics as practised nowadays — that is, as a discipline concerned with the analysis of the interactions between individual decisions and the collective effects of these interactions — is a particular form of metaphysics, based on a particular articulation between self-centredness and other-centredness. The second claim is that, unbeknownst to the vast majority of economists, the basic principle of individual optimization contains the seed of a radical reformulation of what the emergence of `social order' is all about. More specifically, economics will be claimed to be a specific metaphysical discipline based on the monadological worldview inherited from Leibniz and re-arranged to fit the empiricist bias of 18th-century thinkers, and the principle of individual optimization will be claimed to be compatible with a very different metaphysical view of the human subject, a view which `turns subjectivity inside out', so to speak, and treats optimizing calculation as a response rather than as an initiative.The first claim is rather general, and not completely new — it has been hinted at, for example, by Jon Elster in an early book written in French, but it has received precious little attention among economists so far, with the result that economics has become increasingly blind to the philosophical roots of its most fundamental views on individual decision and on social order. The second claim applies to economics and homo œconomicus a general suggestion coming from Alain Renaut, that we ought to make good use of the accusations of incoherence voiced against the monadological scheme in order to re-think the way in which human subjectivity works. Renaut, however, remains at the level of the history of the philosophical concept of subjectivity. Although he does, in passing, make some mention of possible implications for the social sciences, he never goes into the full analysis of what the critique of monadological metaphysics implies for modern theories of society, and for economics in particular. One of my main goals here is to fill this gap.Let me now be more specific about the steps of my analysis. Defending my two claims will require, first of all, a rigorous understanding of the basic methodological stance adopted by economics, namely the idea that social order `emanates' from a bunch of self-centred subjectivities making separate optimizing decisions. Accordingly, in Section 2, I will trace out the analogy that exists between Leibnizian monadology and modern-day economics. The aim there will be to show that economics, unwittingly but for nevertheless deep ethical reasons, has remained `stuck' in a very specific metaphysical position which virtually no contemporary philosophy of subjectivity any longer acknowledges. Section 3, then, will show how the combination of monadology and empiricism which still prevails in contemporary economics can be overcome by entering an altogether distinct philosophical domain characterized by the primacy of Other over Self.While this alternative philosophical stance has experienced a surge of interest in recent decades, it has left the social sciences, and particularly economics, completely untouched. The reason is, I will claim, that this strand of philosophy adopts a form of methodological altruism which stands in contrast both to the methodological individualism of economics and to the methodological holism of various strands of post-Durkheimian sociology. In Section 4, then, I analyze some of the far-reaching consequences for economics which would flow from taking into account `non-I' motives which are not `We' motives, i.e., motives for action which are neither mere holist pastings onto individualism nor mere individualist mitigations of holism.The principle of choice of action through individual optimization will appear as the `hinge' between two worlds: although initially anchored within a worldview where social coexistence is a by-product of individual calculations, the idea of optimization will be seen to be compatible with a very different, and indeed almost reversed worldview, one where individual calculations emerge as by-products of social coexistence — the term `social' being itself radically re-thought in a non-holistic direction.The aim of my analysis, ultimately, is to formulate a challenge for contemporary economics and its implicit view of the interaction between individual and society: Can the combination of monadological and empiricist thinking so strongly ingrained in economics be overcome in the direction of a radically `other-oriented' view of the human subject? Many economists will doubtless believe it cannot; however, they will now, at least, have to explain why they hold to the older view and hence they will have to uncover their often hidden ethical and metaphysical presuppositions. I view this not as an undue disturbance or as mere conceptual hair-splitting, but as a timely opportunity to clarify some deep philosophical issues which haunt economics. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s naturalism is a well-rehearsed theme. The latter has become somewhat of an orthodoxy in Anglo-American scholarship, and it is often connected to the rediscovery of Nietzsche’s ethical thought among analytic philosophers. Philosophical naturalism, of course, can mean many different things, and Nietzsche’s rhetoric, his polemical stance and tendency toward hyperbole, are not exactly hallmarks of a philosophical naturalism that situates itself in close proximity to the methods and methodologies of the natural sciences. On the other hand, it is difficult (...) to deny that much of Nietzsche’s work—perhaps even from the early essay on “Truth and Lying in an Extra-moral Sense” onward—speaks to a tradition.. (shrink)

Background Duty to care is integral to nursing practice. Personal obligations that normally conflict with professional obligations are likely amplified during a public health emergency such as COVID-19. Organizations can facilitate a nurse’s ability to fulfill the duty to care without compromising on personal obligations. Research Aim The study aimed to explore the relationships among duty to care, perception of supportive environment, perceived stress, and COVID-19-specific anxieties in nurses working directly with COVID-19 patients. Research Design The study design was a (...) cross-sectional descriptive study using an online survey. It was conducted at an ANCC Magnet® designated 385-bed acute care teaching hospital located in a suburban area. Participants and Research Context Included in this study were 339 medical surgical nurses working directly with COVID-19 patients during the early phase of the pandemic. Ethical Considerations The study was reviewed by the institution’s clinical research committee and determined to be exempt. A survey invitation letter with a voluntary implied consent agreement was sent to participants with a description of the research study attached to the anonymous survey. Results Nurses with specific COVID-19-related anxieties were more likely to agree that it was ethical to abandon the workplace during a pandemic. Conclusions Organizations can and ought to mitigate the negative effects of COVID-19 on duty to care in future pandemics and healthcare emergencies by incorporating several recommendations derived from this study. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Against the Ethicists (Adversus Mathematicos XI) by Sextus EmpiricusJohn Christian LaursenSextus Empiricus. Against the Ethicists (Adversus Mathematicos XI). Translation, Commentary, and Introduction by Richard Bett. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. xxxiv + 302. NP.Sesto Empirico. Contro gli etici. Introduction, Editing, Translation, and Commentary by Emidio Spinelli. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1995. Pp. 450. NP.Joining the rising tide of scholarly literature that says that skeptics can indeed live their skepticism, (...) and that it is not necessarily a bad life, are these two fine translations of Book XI of Sextus Empiricus’s Against the Mathematicians (known as MXI), the most important for ethics and politics. Considering that the length of Sextus’s text is only 39 pages (in the English version), the length of these two volumes alone indicates that a great deal of philosophical and philological scholarship will be found in them. Both authors do an excellent job of tracking down Sextus’s sources and his targets.Spinelli accepts the traditional position (Janacek’s) that MXI was written after Sextus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism, although he is aware of the minority position that it was the other way around. Bett makes a convincing case for the minority position, including a substantial appendix comparing passages from the two works which suggest that Outlines polishes MXI. This has the merit of explaining Sextus’s apparent “negative dogmatism” in MXI as part of early skepticism and a phase on the way to the more refined and more thoroughly undogmatic skepticism of the Outlines. However, Bett himself mentions counterevidence to his thesis, so it cannot be considered decisively established. Spinelli explains the apparent dogmatism on the assumption that Outlines came first: the usual skeptical reservations set forth in that book should be understood as implied (165–66, 169). Other explanations are that apparent affirmations are ad hominem polemic “inside” Stoic theory (240ff.) or merely relative and with no ontological status (291).Bett divides the text into part A (1–167) and part B (168–end), arguing for compilation of the two parts of the book from different sources with different purposes. Spinelli writes that the often-denigrated 168–end “has a precise function in the internal compositional strategy” of the book (339).English speakers have had to rely too long on the Loeb translation by” B. Bury. Bett questions many of his renderings. For example, Bury translated kakon and kakia as “evil,” with connotations of intentionality, and at MXI 121 even supplied a footnote to Genesis! Bett prefers the less-loaded “bad” and “vice.” Spinelli usually translates kakon with “mali” but uses the loaded “malvagità” for kakia at MXI 121, where Bett would have suggested “vizio.” Bury translated alogon and alogois with “irrational” which Bett corrects to “non-rational” at MXI 143, 148, and 161 to capture the point that what is in question is neither rational nor irrational, but rather “sensory happenings” which have [End Page 313] nothing to do with reasoning (161). Spinelli renders alogon as “irrazionale” at MXI 143 and alogois as “sottrati al ragionamento” at MXI 148 and 161.Spinelli’s is a much more useful and substantial volume than the previous Italian translation. The only thing that might keep Bett’s volume from replacing the Loeb edition is that it does not supply the Greek text on facing pages. Spinelli does.The exhaustive and careful analyses of Spinelli and Bett allow them to disagree in important ways with parts of the substantial recent work on ancient skepticism by Hankinson, McPherran, Annas, Nussbaum, Striker, and Decleva Caizzi (cited as Caizzi by Bett), not to mention the older work of Janacek and the debates from the early 1980s (now dated) among Frede, Burnyeat, and Barnes. Although they do not find Sextus’s work to be flawless by any means, it is clear that we are long past the point at which his work could be dismissed as silly or merely derivative.On the test case of the treatment of Sextus’s example of the tyrant (MXI 166), both Spinelli and Bett point in the right direction. Spinelli sees that “the Pyrrhonist can live easily” (330) and that MXI 165–67 provides “a new key to understanding the ‘moral skepticism... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 105-107 [Access article in PDF] Richard H. Popkin. The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xxiv + 415. Cloth, $74.00. Paper, $24.95. Richard Popkin tells the story that once a long time ago when he asked a question at a conference that made reference to late-eighteenth-century skeptics like Maimon (...) and Platner, Myles Burnyeat turned to the audience and asked, "Does anyone else read these people that Popkin reads?" The answer, by the time we get to this, the fourth edition of a book that first appeared in 1960, is that lots of people are reading the people that Popkin reads. Now [End Page 105] Myles Burnyeat is quoted on the cover of this volume for graciously saying "I regard it as one of the seminal books in the history of ideas." In one of the three Festschriften that have been published in Popkin's honor, David Katz even reports that some of those who work in areas Popkin pioneered refer to themselves as "Popkinites" (James E. Force and David S. Katz, eds., Everything Connects [Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999], ix).Popkin was also founding editor of this journal, and his name has been footnoted in numerous articles over the years, so it will not be unknown to many. But readers will want to know what is new in this latest version of the classic work. For openers, it is roughly fifty percent longer, now 18 chapters instead of the 12 chapters of the last version. The original book was subtitled "From Erasmus to Descartes" and the later California edition subtitle became "From Erasmus to Spinoza." This edition pushes the envelope in both directions: back to Savonarola and forward to Pierre Bayle.The Savonarola connection comes from the unlikely discovery that the famous monk collected manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus and was planning to have them translated as tools for use against pagan philosophy and in favor of revealed religion. This brings out one of Popkin's favorite points: that what we think of as philosophical skepticism was part and parcel of religious debate early on. Among other new findings in this edition, Popkin finds clues that Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel) may have helped Gianfrancesco Pico read anti-Aristotelian Hebrew texts. Jews could use this sort of skepticism against the dogmatic Christians who tried to refute them.The religious connection is fundamental throughout the text. In his new introduction, Popkin admits that "I am more in sympathy with those who used the sceptical and fideist views of the nouveaux pyrrhoniens for religious rather than secular purposes" (p. xxiii). He has developed this sympathy into research on millenarianism in volumes such as Popkin and David S. Katz, Messianic Revolution: Radical Religious Politics to the End of the Second Millennium (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998) and Popkin, et al., eds., Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture, 4 vols. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001).Other new materials follow the discussion of Descartes with a chapter on Henry More, Pascal, and the Quietists and another one on Hobbes's political and practical answer to skepticism. There are new chapters on Wilkins, Boyle, and Glanvill of the Royal Society, and on late seventeenth-century metaphysics. New material on Simon Foucher and Pierre-Daniel Huet is followed by the concluding chapter on Pierre Bayle as a "super sceptic."The book has never been uncontroversial. Although they could follow the skeptical undercutting of the Bible in Spinoza, many scholars could not see how the master of the geometrical method in ethics could be anything but a dogmatist in the final analysis. (Popkin has an answer.) The same doubt will now apply to the treatment of Pierre Bayle in this version. To Popkin, as we have seen, Bayle is a "super sceptic" who "carried scepticism to its ultimate extreme" (300); to Gianluca Mori (Bayle philosophe, Paris: Champion, 1999) and others, he is a dogmatic philosophical atheist as well as moral rigorist. To his credit... (shrink)

This literature review systematically synthesizes studies that link consumer research to differences and similarities in virtue ethics between the East and the West, with a focus on early Chinese and ancient Greek virtue ethics. These two major traditions provide principles that guide consumer behavior and thus serve as a background to comparatively explain and evaluate the ethical nature of consumer behavior in the East and the West. The paper first covers Eastern and Western theoretical and normative approaches (...) of virtue ethics in the field of consumer research. The subsequent systematic literature review then synthesizes empirical works in this field. Since only a few papers adopt a cross-cultural consumer research perspective, one of the main aims of this review is to encourage scholars to pursue both theoretical and empirical cross-cultural consumer research on virtue ethics. To this end, the paper closes by suggesting some fruitful directions for future research to stimulate this relatively under-researched area. (shrink)

This book concentrates upon how economic rationalities have been embedded into particular historical practices, cultures, and moral systems. Through multiple case-studies, situated in different historical contexts of the modern West, the book shows that the development of economic rationalities takes place in the meeting with other regimes of thought, values, and moral discourses. The book offers new and refreshing insights, ranging from the development of early economic thinking to economic aspects and concepts in the works of classical thinkers (...) such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Karl Marx, to the role of economic reasoning in contemporary policies of art and health care. With economic rationalities as the read thread, the reader is offered a unique chance of historical self-awareness and recollection of how economic rationality became the powerful ideological and moral force that it is today. (shrink)

Despite petitions from friends and critics through much of his career, Paul Ramsey adamantly refused to revise his first book, Basic Christian Ethics. Yet, several pieces of Ramsey’s private correspondence indicate specific changes to Basic Christian Ethics that he felt were necessary. These include a desire to distance his use of agape from associations with Anders Nygren’s Agape and Eros, an added emphasis on the importance of the doctrine of creation for his understanding of agape, covenant, (...) and natural law, and a shift from eschatology to Christology as the foundational doctrine for political ethics. Drawing upon personal letters and other disparate comments throughout Ramsey’s published work, this paper explores the impact such proposed revisions might have on contemporary interest (or lack thereof) in Basic Christian Ethics. In so doing it also highlights Ramsey’s ability to rethink central theological concepts in his work and draw his readers’ attention to fundamental questions in the field of moral theology. (shrink)

Many studies have emphasized the importance of medical, insurance, and workplace systems treating individuals fairly in work disability prevention and return-to-work. However, ethical theories and perspectives from these different systems are rarely discussed in relation to each other, even though in practice these systems constantly interact. This paper explores ethical theories and perspectives that may apply to the WDP–RTW field, and discusses these in relation to perspectives attributed to dominant stakeholders in this field, and to potential differences in different jurisdictional (...) contexts. Literature was sought primarily in biomedical ethics, business ethics, and public administration ethics. In biomedical ethics, four ethical principles are dominant: autonomy, beneficence, nonmalevolence, and justice. Business ethics involve theories on Corporate Social Responsibility, social contracts, and organizational justice. Public administration ethics focus on constitutional theory, citizenship, social equity, virtue, and public interest. Several concepts were identified as relevant for ethical analyses in the WDP–RTW field, including justice; individual autonomy; nonmalevolence; economic and social responsibility; and social contracts. These concepts provide a vocabulary that may be used to analyze stakeholders’ actions and interactions in RTW processes. It was also noted how the power balance between stakeholders will influence which ethical perspectives will influence RTW. Jurisdictional differences that influence RTW processes with regard to stakeholder responsibilities were identified, as well as varying beliefs as to who is the client in different compensation systems. A social contractual approach may inform an analysis of cultural and legal differences. (shrink)

Mass media ethics and the classical liberal ideal of the autonomous individual are historically linked and professionally dominant--yet the authors of this work feel this is intrinsically flawed. They show how recent research in philosophy and social science--together with a longer tradition in theological inquiry--insist that community, mutuality, and relationship are fundamental to a full concept of personhood. The authors argue that "persons-in-community" provides a more defensible grounding for journalists' professional moral decision-making in crucial areas such as truthtelling, privacy, (...) organizational culture, and balanced coverage. With numerous examples drawn from life as well as from theory, this book will interest journalists, editors, and professionals in media management as well as students and scholars of media ethics, reporting, and media law. (shrink)

This work investigates the early encounters of French philosophers and religious thinkers with the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Following an introductory chapter addressing context and methodology, Chapter 2 argues that Henri Bergson's insights into lived duration and intuition and Maurice Blondel's genetic description of action functioned as essential precursors to the French reception of phenomenology. Chapter 3 details the presentations of Husserl and his followers by three successive pairs of French academic philosophers: Léon Noël and Victor Delbos, Lev (...) Shestov and Jean Hering, and Bernard Groethuysen and Georges Gurvitch. Chapter 4 then explores the appropriation of Bergsonian and Blondelian phenomenological insights by Catholic theologians Édouard Le Roy and Pierre Rousselot. Chapter 5 examines applications and critiques of phenomenology by French religious philosophers, including Jean Hering, Joseph Maréchal, and neo-Thomists like Jacques Maritain. A concluding chapter expounds the principal finding that philosophical and theological receptions of phenomenology in France prior to 1939 proceeded independently due to differences in how Bergson and Blondel were perceived by French philosophers and religious thinkers and their respective orientations to the Cartesian and Aristotelian/Thomist intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently claimed to have discovered a new and rather significant problem with virtue ethics. According to them, virtue ethics generates certain expectations about the behavior of human beings which are subject to empirical testing. But when the relevant experimental work is done in social psychology, the results fall remarkably short of meeting those expectations. So, these philosophers think, despite its recent success, virtue ethics has far less to offer to contemporary ethical theory than might (...) have been initially thought. I argue that there are plausible ways in which virtue ethicists can resist arguments based on empirical work in social psychology. In the first three sections of the paper, I reconstruct the line of reasoning being used against virtue ethics by looking at the recent work of Gilbert Harman and John Doris. The remainder of the paper is then devoted both to responding to their challenge as well as to briefly sketching a positive account of character trait possession. (shrink)

Suppose you perform two actions. The first imposes a risk of harm that, on its own, would be excessive; but the second reduces the risk of harm by a corresponding amount. By pairing the two actions together to form a set of actions that is risk-neutral, can you thereby make your overall course of conduct permissible? This question is theoretically interesting, because the answer is apparently: sometimes Yes, sometimes No. It is also practically important, because it bears on the moral (...) status of practices such as offsetting personal greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this article we propose a criterion for distinguishing between cases where pairing risk-increasing and risk-reducing actions makes each action permissible, and those where it does not: the Principle of Aggregate Risk-Imposition. We work towards this by considering a range of examples that illustrate various illegitimate ways of pairing risk-increasing actions with risk-reducing ones, and asking what goes wrong in each case. We then use this criterion to evaluate GHG offsetting. Is offsetting a legitimate way of removing the risk-imposition associated with GHG emissions, or not? Controversially, we argue that this turns out to depend on the form that the offsetting takes. (shrink)

In this paper, we demonstrate that the works of Franz Kafka provide an exemplary resource for the investigation of “moral distance” in organizational ethics. We accomplish this in two ways, first by drawing on Kafka’s work to navigate the complexities of the debate over the ethics of bureaucracy, using his work to expand and enrich the concept of “moral distance.” Second, Kafka’s work is used to investigate the existence of “ethical violence” within organizations which entails acts of (...) condemnation and cruelty purportedly in the name of ethics. Kafka’s work provides insight into the processes of moral distancing across a range of organizational contexts including highly formal as well as more informal settings. The paper enriches the concept “moral distance” by identifying the existence of facilitators of moral distance beyond the mechanisms of formal rationality that have been the focus of existing studies. We argue that Kafka’s intense portrayal of “ethical violence” points to an aporia at the very heart of organizational ethics. (shrink)

This textbook examines the extent to which moral values play a role as productive forces for the economy, and explores the effect of ethical and unethical Behavior on the economy. It shows how ethics improves productivity in the economy, and provides specific ethics tools for practical application for students and managers. Stemming from an overall interdisciplinary approach, and combining recent research results from sciences such as economics, business administration, Behavioral economics, philosophy, psychology and sociology, this textbook fills a (...) gap in the literature on ethics in business. The book begins with the foundations of business ethics by defining business ethics, delineating its objectives, and discussing the importance of business ethics for business, the economy and society. Next, it presents the ethical evaluation approaches to enable the reader to evaluate economic Behavior ethically. It then explores ‘man in business’, and deals with such issues as Behavior, motivation, ethical orientation, and the presence or absence of a sense of justice. Following this is a discussion of the rules of the market and of questions such as: Does the market economy promote ethical Behavior or is there a conflict of goals between ethics and market economy? Do companies have a social responsibility? The book concludes with an analysis of the importance of ethics for productivity in the enterprise and in the economy, and presents ethics tools as the instruments with which management can promote ethical Behavior of their employees. Following a textbook structure, the book first derives knowledge from scientific studies that is relevant for students, and then summarizes the results. It explains ethical assessment approaches, and then gives an ethical assessment of economic Behavior using case studies. It uses roleplaying and games to explain the Behavior of people in relation to ethics. (shrink)

Much recent philosophical work on social freedom focuses on whether freedom should be understood as non-interference, in the liberal tradition associated with Isaiah Berlin, or as non-domination, in the republican tradition revived by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner. We defend a conception of freedom that lies between these two alternatives: freedom as independence. Like republican freedom, it demands the robust absence of relevant constraints on action. Unlike republican, and like liberal freedom, it is not moralized. We show that freedom as (...) independence retains the virtues of its liberal and republican counterparts while shedding their vices. Our aim is to put this conception of freedom more firmly on the map and to offer a novel perspective on the logical space in which different conceptions of freedom are located. (shrink)

Nanomedicine plays a prominent role among emerging technologies. The spectrum of potential applications is as broad as it is promising. It includes the use of nanoparticles and nanodevices for diagnostics, targeted drug delivery in the human body, the production of new therapeutic materials as well as nanorobots or nanoprotheses. Funding agencies are investing large sums in the development of this area, among them the European Commission, which has launched a large network for life-sciences related nanotechnology. At the same time government (...) agencies as well as the private sector are putting forward reports of working groups that have looked into the promises and risks of these developments. This paper will begin with an introduction to the central ethical themes as identified by selected reports from Europe and beyond. In a next step, it will analyse the most frequently invoked ethical concerns–risk assessment and management, the issues of human identity and enhancement, possible implications for civil liberties (e.g. nanodevices that might be used for covert surveillance), and concerns about equity and fair access. Although it seems that the main ethical issues are not unique to nanotechnologies, the conclusion will argue against shrugging them off as non-specific items that have been considered before in the context of other biomedical technologies, such as gene therapy or xenotransplantation. Rather, the paper will call on ethicists to help foster a rational, fair and participatory discourse on the different potential applications of nanotechnologies in medicine, which can form the basis for informed and responsible societal and political decisions. (shrink)

The Continuum Companion to Ethics offers a definitive guide to a key area of contemporary philosophy. The book covers all the fundamental questions asked by meta-ethics and normative ethical theory - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Fourteen specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the field and, most valuably, the exciting (...) new directions the field is taking. The Companion explores issues pertaining to moral methodology, moral realism, ethical expressivism, constructivism and the error theory, morality and practical reason, moral psychology, morality and religion, consequentialism, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, feminist ethics, moral particularism, experimental ethics, and biology, evolution, and ethics. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including important technical terms in ethics, a historical chronology, an extensive overview of contemporary meta-ethics and normative ethical theory, a detailed list of internet resources for research in ethics, and a thorough list of recommended works for further study, this is the essential reference tool for anyone working in contemporary philosophical ethics. (shrink)

The phenomenon of twinning in early fetal development has become a popular source for doubt regarding the ascription of moral status to early embryos. In this paper, the possible moral basis for such a line of reasoning is critically analysed with sceptical results. Three different versions of the argument from twinning are considered, all of which are found to rest on confusions between the actual division of embryos involed in twinning and the property of early embryos to (...) be divisible, be based on highly questionable ethical assumptions, or to imply inconsistent claims regarding the moral importance of potentiality and/or the moral status of embryos. This is taken to expose a number of related inconsistencies in the moral basis of pro-life positions. In particular, ascribing moral significance to the property of being (in)divisible is found to be incompatible with the claim that human individuals possess unique values which could underpin an absolute moral ban on murder. (shrink)

As government pressure on major technology companies builds, both firms and legislators are searching for technical solutions to difficult platform governance puzzles such as hate speech and misinformation. Automated hash-matching and predictive machine learning tools – what we define here as algorithmic moderation systems – are increasingly being deployed to conduct content moderation at scale by major platforms for user-generated content such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This article provides an accessible technical primer on how algorithmic moderation works; examines (...) some of the existing automated tools used by major platforms to handle copyright infringement, terrorism and toxic speech; and identifies key political and ethical issues for these systems as the reliance on them grows. Recent events suggest that algorithmic moderation has become necessary to manage growing public expectations for increased platform responsibility, safety and security on the global stage; however, as we demonstrate, these systems remain opaque, unaccountable and poorly understood. Despite the potential promise of algorithms or ‘AI’, we show that even ‘well optimized’ moderation systems could exacerbate, rather than relieve, many existing problems with content policy as enacted by platforms for three main reasons: automated moderation threatens to further increase opacity, making a famously non-transparent set of practices even more difficult to understand or audit, further complicate outstanding issues of fairness and justice in large-scale sociotechnical systems and re-obscure the fundamentally political nature of speech decisions being executed at scale. (shrink)

This paper presents a systematic account of ethical issues actualised in different areas, as well as at different levels and stages of health care, by introducing organisational and other procedures that embody a shift towards person centred care and shared decision-making (PCC/SDM). The analysis builds on general ethical theory and earlier work on aspects of PCC/SDM relevant from an ethics perspective. This account leads up to a number of theoretical as well as empirical and practice oriented issues that, in (...) view of broad advancements towards PCC/SDM, need to be considered by health care ethics researchers. Given a PCC/SDM-based reorientation of health care practice, such ethics research is essential from a quality assurance perspective. (shrink)

I first argue that there are many true claims of the form: Φ-ing would be morally required, if anything is. I then explain why the following conditional-type is true: If φ-ing would be morally required, if anything is, then anything is actually morally required. These results allow us to construct valid proofs for the existence of some substantive moral facts—proofs that some particular acts really are morally required. Most importantly, none of my argumentation presupposes any substantive moral claim; I use (...) only plausible claims that most moral skeptics and error theorists can and do accept. The final section diagnoses why my arguments work. Here, I offer an explanation for the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral that may help those worried that the strategy is a sophisticated trick. I conclude by considering two objections. In replying to these objections, I explain why the strategy may allow us to demonstrate more than “obvious” moral truths, and why it may also address a stronger version of error theory, according to which, moral truths are not possible. (shrink)

The Bloomsbury Companion to Ethics offers the definitive guide to this key area of contemporary philosophy. Covering all the fundamental questions asked by meta-ethics and normative ethical theory, thirteen specially commissioned chapters from an international team of experts explore the central ideas, terms and case studies in the field, and new directions in ethics as a whole. Now available in paperback, the Companion to Ethics covers issues such as moral methodology, moral realism, ethical expressivism, constructivism and (...) the error theory, morality and practical reason, moral psychology, morality and religion, consequentialism, Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, feminist ethics, moral particularism, experimental ethics, and biology, evolution and ethics. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including key technical terms, a historical chronology, a detailed list of internet resources for research in ethics, and a thorough list of recommended works for further study, this is the essential resource for anyone studying, researching and writing in contemporary philosophical ethics. (shrink)

The Swedish solution to the legal handling of professional conscientious refusal in healthcare is described. No legal right to conscientious refusal for any profession or class of professional tasks exists in Sweden, regardless of the religious or moral background of the objection. The background of this can be found in strong convictions about the importance of public service provision and related civic duties, and ideals about rule of law, equality and non-discrimination. Employee's requests to change work tasks are handled on (...) a case-by-case basis within the frames of labour law, ensuring full voluntariness, and also employer's privilege regarding the organisation and direction of work, and duties of public institutions to provide services. Two complicating aspects of this solution related to the inclusion of ‘alternative medical’ service providers in a national health service, and professional insistence on conscientious refusal rights to accept legalised assisted dying are discussed. The latter is found to undermine the pragmatic reasons behind recent attempts by prolife groups to challenge the Swedish solution related to legal abortion in courts. (shrink)

Organizational deviance represents a costly behavior to many organizations. While some precursors to deviance have been identified, we hope to add to our predictive capabilities. Utilizing social cognitive theory and psychological contract theory as explanatory concepts, we explore the role of moral disengagement and turnover intentions, testing our hypotheses using two samples: a sample of 44 nurses from a hospital system in the Southwestern United States (Study 1), and a sample of 52 working adults collected from an online survey system (...) (Study 2). Results strongly supported our hypotheses in both samples, indicating that the self-regulatory deactivation inherent in moral disengagement led to increased organizational deviance; effects that were much more pronounced when turnover intentions were high. Our findings support the increased role of cognition in determining behavior when environmental pressures stemming from the psychological contract have been altered, leading to a number of theoretical and practical implications, particularly in industries with high turnover rates. (shrink)

In the light of the modern idea of a sovereign and self-transparent subject, the paper evaluates the philosophical and ethical relevance of Bildung. As a first step, (the early) Nietzsche's and Adorno's criticism of Bildung is explicated, a criticism based upon the thinkers' critical stance towards the modern epistemological relation of subject and object. However, neither thinker abandons the concept of Bildung. The second part of the paper accordingly reconstructs Nietzsche's and Adorno's adherence to Bildung understood as a different (...) relationship of subject and object within Bildung. In the paper's concluding reflections there is an attempt to assess the systematic educational consequences, and to shed light on the ethical relevance, of a non-transparent subject of Bildung. (shrink)

Many approaches to addressing labour injustices—shortfalls from minimally decent wages and working conditions— focus on how governments should orient themselves toward other states in which such phenomena take place, or to the firms that are involved with such practices. But of course the question of how to regard such labour practices must also be faced by individuals, and individual consumers of the goods that are produced through these practices in particular. Consumers have become increasingly aware of their connections to complex (...) global production processes that often involve such injustice. For example, activist campaigns have exposed wrongful harm in factories producing clothes, shoes and mobile phones and farms producing coffee, tea and cocoa. These campaigns have promoted the message to ordinary people that by becoming connected to unjust labour practices through their purchasing behaviour, they acquire special additional moral responsibilities to contribute to reforming such practices, or to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing that result from them. The moral significance of the responsibilities of individual consumers has not, however, received much analytical scrutiny. Why should we believe that there are such responsibilities? And if there are such responsibilities, what are their grounds? How stringent are the responsibilities triggered by such connections? Finally, what are the implications of such responsibilities—the courses of action that they prescribe or proscribe? The activists who assert special ethical responsibilities for consumers have promoted many particular courses of action, but have seldom articulated the grounds of these responsibilities or explained why they should be taken to be stringent. And moral and political theorists have not devoted much focussed attention to this issue. For the consumer who is concerned to act in a morally permissible way, this presents a troubling practical challenge regarding the goods they may (or may not) purchase, and the moral relevance of their consumption choices more generally. While we cannot address all of these pressing questions in this chapter, we try to make some headway with them by discussing two general approaches to the question of how individuals should conceive of their responsibilities with respect to such practices, taking as our starting point the recent work of the late Iris Marion Young—the most sustained treatment of this topic by a prominent political theorist. In a series of influential articles and a posthumously published book, Young articulated an approach to conceiving of individual responsibilities to address labour injustices—the social connection model—at home and abroad. She also argued that an alternative model—the liability model—which she claimed had dominated discourse on this topic, suffered from very serious flaws. In a critical vein, we will argue that Young’s arguments against the liability model are not convincing, and that the alternative she proposes is itself vulnerable to some damaging objections. We also find, however, that the liability model would need to be extended in various ways to provide an adequate account of individual responsibility to address shortfalls from minimally decent wages and working conditions, and we begin the task of sketching an extended framework. (shrink)

The papyri transmit a part of the testimonia relevant to pre-Socratic philosophy. The ʼCorpus dei Papiri Filosofici‛ takes this material only partly into account. In this volume, a team of specialists discusses some of the most important papyrological texts that are major instruments for reconstructing pre-Socratic philosophy and doxography. Furthermore, these texts help to increase our knowledge of how pre-Socratic thought – through contributions to physics, cosmology, ethics, ontology, theology, anthropology, hermeneutics, and aesthetics – paved the way for the (...) canonic scientific fields of European culture. More specifically, each paper tackles papyrological texts concerning the Orphics, the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the early Atomists, and the Sophists. For the first time in the field of pre-Socratics studies, several papers are devoted to the Herculanean sources, along with others concerning the Graeco-Egyptian papyri and the Derveni Papyrus. (shrink)

This book explores what science fiction can tell us about the human condition in a technological world, with the ethical dilemmas and consequences that this entails. This book is the result of the joint efforts of scholars and scientists from various disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach sets an example for those who, like us, have been busy assessing the ways in which fictional attempts to fathom the possibilities of science and technology speak to central concerns about what it means to be (...) human in a contemporary world of technology and which ethical dilemmas it brings along. One of the aims of this book is to demonstrate what can be achieved in approaching science fiction as a kind of imaginary laboratory for experimentation, where visions of human (or even post-human) life under various scientific, technological or natural conditions that differ from our own situation can be thought through and commented upon. Although a scholarly work, this book is also designed to be accessible to a general audience that has an interest in science fiction, as well as to a broader academic audience interested in ethical questions. (shrink)

A considerable body of research supports the link between Machiavellianism and antisocial forms of behavior at work. Yet, meta-analytic findings and existing theory allude to a more complex story, whereby Machiavellian employees’ engagement in antisocial acts is likely to be simultaneously influenced by countervailing situational forces. To promote more nuanced, contextualized knowledge of high Machs’ antisocial tendencies at work, we developed and tested a social context model that describes how multiple situational factors may, at once, provoke _and_ constrain the tendency (...) of such individuals to engage in one notable form of antisocial behavior at work: social undermining. Specifically, we argue that Machiavellian employees likely experience competing motivations to undermine their colleagues as a result of two countervailing situational factors that are relevant to their self-interests: anticipated organizational change and perceptions of coworkers’ exchange quality. To develop our predictions, we draw on trait activation theory’s core assertion that employees’ behavior is multiply determined, such that trait–behavior relations stem from a complex interplay among diverse and potentially competing trait-relevant situational cues. The results of a three-wave, time-lagged survey supported our predictions that anticipated change would strengthen the positive relation between Machiavellianism and undermining, while perceptions of coworkers’ exchange quality would attenuate it. Additionally, the results supported our three-way interaction hypothesis that perceived coworker exchange quality would weaken the two-way interaction effect of Machiavellianism and anticipated organizational change on social undermining. We discuss the implications of our findings, as well as avenues for future research. (shrink)

Thanks largely to the work of Robert Adams and Philip Quinn, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of interest in divine command theory as a viable position in normative theory and meta-ethics. More recently, however, there has been some dissatisfaction with divine command theory even among those philosophers who claim that normative properties are grounded in God, and as a result alternative views have begun to emerge, most notably divine intention theory (Murphy, Quinn) and divine (...) motivation theory (Zagzebski). My goal here is to outline a distinct theory, divine desire theory, and suggest that, even if it is not clearly superior to these extant views, it is at least worthy of serious consideration.1 As far as this paper is concerned, the discussion will be limited just to the deontic status of actions (obligatory, permissible, forbidden), and so no attempt will be made to also account for axiological properties such as goodness or evil. In order to get oriented to the range of deontological views in this area, consider the following three rough characterizations. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper aims to present results of a study that focused on the question of how computer and data experts think about Internet and social media surveillance after Edward Snowden’s revelations about the existence of mass-surveillance systems of the Internet such as Prism, XKeyscore and Tempora. Computer and data experts’ views are of particular relevance because they are confronted day by day with questions about the processing of personal data, privacy and data protection.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted two focus groups with a (...) total of ten experts based in London. As London is considered by some as the surveillance capital of the world, and has a thriving Internet industry, it provided a well-suited context.FindingsThe focus group discussions featured three topics that are of crucial importance for understanding Internet and social media surveillance: the political economy surveillance in general; surveillance in the context of the Snowden revelations; and the question what the best political reactions are to the existence of a surveillance-industrial complex that results in political and economic control of the Internet and social media. The focus groups provided indications that computer and data experts are pre-eminently informed on how Internet surveillance works, are capable of critically assessing its implications for society and have ideas about on what should be done politically.Originality/valueStudies of privacy and surveillance after Edward Snowden’s revelations have taken on a new dimension: Large-scale covert surveillance is conducted in a collaborative endeavour of secret services, private communications corporations and security companies. It has become evident that a surveillance-industrial Internet surveillance complex exists, in which capitalist communications and security corporations and state institutions collaborate. (shrink)

Despite the importance of the Moist-Confucian debate to students of both Chinese thought and comparative religious ethics, it remains in need of a careful analysis using contemporary ethical theory. In presenting such an analysis, this essay aims to accomplish three things: (1) to show how Confucius and Mo-tzu were divided over the priority-of-the-right issue, the latter being a utilitarian in his working ethics despite his oft-noted interest in divine command theory; (2) to describe how their followers worked out (...) a meta-ethical basis for their respective positions on this issue (Mencius, in particular, opposing the psychological and "definist" approach of the Moists with an "intuitionist" one that would have a deep influence upon later Confucian orthodoxy); (3) to demonstrate the tendency, perhaps grounded in the structure of human thought, toward conflict between two basic ways of doing normative ethics: the deontological and the teleological. (shrink)

This collection moves from COVID to Kairos, engaged with the legacy of Paul Tillich. Liminal spaces reflect ambiguous transitional moments in human consciousness and culture. In early 2020, cultures and states turned inward for protection, exacerbating intertwined health, political, racial justice, and economic crises. Tillich would have understood these overlapping challenges to be heralding a kairotic moment, reflecting simultaneous crises and opportunities. The collected essays reflect on the intersections of COVID and Kairos. Authors engage numerous ethical challenges precipitated by (...) the current Kairos moment, thinking through and with Tillich. Other essays offer reflections on our cultural moment, engaging topics from public health to video games to hate speech. Reflecting on the cultural moment, this collection offers unique insight into the Tillichian legacy for the present and future. (shrink)

Rush Rhees, Elizabeth Anscombe and Georg Henrik von Wright were Wittgenstein’s literary heirs and edited many posthumous volumes from Wittgenstein’s writings. Their archived correspondence provides unique insights into this editorial work. The selection of letters written by Rhees which is presented here stems from an early phase of his editorial endeavour to shed light on Wittgenstein’s philosophical development between the _TLP_ and the _PI_. The letters were written between 1962 and 1964, in connection with the volume that appeared as (...) _Philosophische Bemerkungen_, and show how Rhees’ understanding of Wittgenstein’s texts developed during editing. They contain some of the central considerations that governed Rhees’ work as Wittgenstein’s literary executor. (shrink)

While Garfinkel’s early work, captured in Studies in Ethnomethodology, has received a lot of attention and discussion, this has not been the case for his later work since the 1970s. In this paper, we critically examine the aims of Garfinkel’s later ethnomethodological studies of work programme and evaluate key ideas such as the ‘missing what’ in the sociology of work, ‘the unique adequacy requirements of methods’, and the notion of ‘hybrid studies’. We do so through a detailed engagement with (...) a study that has frequently been singled out as exemplary by Garfinkel for his studies of work programme, namely Livingston’s The Ethnomethodological Foundations of Mathematics. We show how Livingston uses the proof of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem as a way to exhibit the work involved in understanding mathematical proofs. We then discuss how Livingston uses this example to introduce a distinction between the written ‘proof account’ and the associated ‘lived work’ of working through that proof, which we argue allows Livingston to provide a powerful critique of a formalist understanding of the objectivity of mathematics. We then discuss three aspects that we find problematic in Livingston’s and Garfinkel’s claims about Livingston’s study. Firstly, we question whether written proofs are best conceived of as descriptions or accounts. Secondly, we interrogate whether an ethnomethodological study could teach mathematicians how to make discoveries. Thirdly, we throw doubt on Garfinkel’s claim that Livingston’s results are results in mathematics. We conclude this paper with a discussion of how Livingston’s study Gödel’s proof highlights key tensions in Garfinkel’s later work. Firstly, we argue that there exists an ambiguity in Garfinkel’s treatment of texts as ‘incompetent’. Secondly, we show that Garfinkel’s attempt to extend his idea of classical studies from sociology to other professions and disciplines is problematic. Finally, we question Garfinkel’s proposals to reorient ethnomethodological studies away from sociological audiences and ask whether ethnomethodological studies promise the delivery of a ‘large prize’ or, rather, provide something like ‘helpful therapy’. (shrink)

Human risk (the risk of people doing things they shouldn't, or not doing things they should') is the largest single risk facing all organisations -- when things go wrong, there's always a human component, either causing the problem or making it worse. Collectively, companies spend billions trying to manage human risk via functions like Compliance, InfoSec, Risk, Audit, Legal, Human Resources and Internal Comms -- it is people in these functions, as well as those tasked with managing people, that is (...) the target audience for the book. Technology exacerbates the problem by providing each of us with weapons of mass destruction' from a human risk perspective -- even the most junior employee can cause huge damage via their keyboard, either in the work environment or via their personal social media account -- and by taking over basic, repetitive tasks, which mean people are spending more time in human risk sensitive' activities. Traditional approaches to mitigating human risk rely heavily on the idealised presumption that because people are employed, they can simply be told what to do -- this works well in safety-critical environments, where the black & white' parameters of desired outcomes are easy to predict, but is much harder when it comes to grey', less codifiable, areas like ethics which are often difficult to monitor until it's too late and rely on employees being positively engaged. If we want to mitigate the risks posed by human decision-making, then we need to base our approach on an understanding of how humans actually make decisions, which is where Behavioural Science -- a discipline based on academic research and field-tested on real' humans by advertisers, governments and transport authorities -- can help achieve better outcomes. This book is designed to help all those involved in managing human risk to achieve compliance' with a small -- in other words, getting their desired outcome -- and explores how organisations can get the best out of their people by designing frameworks that work with, rather than against, the grain of human thinking. Readers will learn to challenge their existing presumptions about managing human risk and discover practical techniques and examples they can deploy in their work environment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 24-38 [Access article in PDF] Arne Naess, Val Plumwood, and Deep Ecological SubjectivityA Contribution to the "Deep Ecology-ecofeminism Debate" Christian Diehm Karen Warren's recent essay, "Ecofeminist Philosophy and Deep Ecology," begins by noting that the philosophical positions found under the heading "deep ecology" are anything but monolithic. This point, which has been overlooked by deep ecologists as often as by others, (...) is crucial for those who are interested in the "deep ecology-ecofeminism debate," for just as one must specify which of the ecofeminisms are in question, so too one must be clear about which of the deep ecologies is being debated, if one is to make one's way through the complex relationships between them. In the course of her article, Warren recounts with approval Val Plumwood's "Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism," an essay which locates, discusses, and critiques three versions of the "self" that various deep ecologists offer. In light of Plumwood's comments, Warren argues that the work of Arne Naess differs significantly from other deep ecologists such that "Naess' deep ecology position is or could be compatible with ecofeminism" (Warren 1999, 255). [End Page 24]In this essay, I propose to continue the analysis offered by Warren by examining how Naess might respond individually to the objections Plumwood voices. This will be done by looking closely at Naess's articulation of what he refers to as the "ultimate premises" of his view, premises that are not necessarily aspects of deep ecology per se, but of his own ecophilosophy, "Ecosophy 'T'." 1 I will argue that even though Naess may not be subject to Plumwood's most immediate criticisms, her work exposes the problematic tendency of his philosophy of identification to stress sameness in relations with others. I will conclude by suggesting a critical revision of the notion of identification that would allow one to retain key features of Naess's view—most notably his gestaltist understanding of the "self" or "subject" and his emphasis on "Self-realization" as an ultimate norm—while responding to the problems that Plumwood's work exposes. The Self as Transpersonal One of the three senses of self specified by Plumwood is the "transpersonal" self. Her discussion of the transpersonal self focuses on the work of Warwick Fox who, in his Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, describes three "varieties of identification": personal, ontological, and cosmological. 2 Fox favors the latter two because they are less local than personal identification, and this is due to the fact that they are not rooted in the immediate reality in which one moves, but rather within broader, more encompassing views, and thus are said to be "impartial" (Fox 1995, 256). As such, it is claimed that these trans-personal forms of identification escape the problem that accompanies personal identification, which is that, qua personal, it is necessarily biased in favor of those with whom one has personal contact, and thus seems to "have far more to do with the cause of possessiveness, greed, exploitation, war, and ecological destruction than with the solution to these seemingly intractable problems" (262). But this is not meant to imply an outright rejection of personal identification, and Fox cites as proof of this Naess's approval of the "felt nearness" of others as a principle for resolving conflicts. Fox's point is to show that trans-personal identification "proceeds from a sense of the cosmos... and works inward to each particular individual's sense of commonality with other entities" (258), but that within this framework personal identification remains important as "an inescapable aspect of living and... plays a fundamental role in human development" (266-7).Plumwood's critique of this view is that the privileging of the transpersonal [End Page 25] over the personal repeats a patriarchal gesture of the exclusion of a "corrupting and self-interested" particularity in favor of an impersonal and abstract universality (Plumwood 1991, 15). And, ultimately, such a position "cannot allow for the deep and highly... (shrink)

A detailed list of leading articles and books in a variety of areas of normative and meta-ethics. Current to 2010.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most widely read philosophers of the twentieth century. But the books in which his philosophy was published – with the exception of his early work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus – were posthumously edited from the writings he left to posterity. How did his 20,000 pages of philosophical writing become published volumes? Using extensive archival material, this Element reconstructs and examines the way in which Wittgenstein's writings were edited over more than fifty years, and shows how (...) the published volumes tell a thrilling story of philosophical inheritance. The discussion ranges over the conflicts between the editors, their deviations from Wittgenstein's manuscripts, other scholarly issues which arose, and also the shared philosophical tradition of the editors, which animated their desire to be faithful to Wittgenstein and to make his writings both available and accessible. The Element can thus be read as a companion to all of Wittgenstein's published works of philosophy. (shrink)

This collection provides the first in-depth introduction to the theory of the religious imagination put forward by renowned philosopher Douglas Hedley, from his earliest essays to his principal writings. Featuring Hedley's inaugural lecture delivered at Cambridge University in 2018, the book sheds light on his robust concept of religious imagination as the chief power of the soul's knowledge of the Divine and reveals its importance in contemporary metaphysics, ethics and politics. Chapters trace the development of the religious imagination in (...) Christian Platonism from Late Antiquity to British Romanticism, drawing on Origen, Henry More and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, before providing a survey of alternative contemporary versions of the concept as outlined by Karl Rahner, René Girard and William P. Alston, as well as within Indian philosophy. By bringing Christian Platonist thought into dialogue with contemporary philosophy and theology, the volume systematically reveals the relevance of Hedley's work to current debates in religious epistemology and metaphysics. It offers a comprehensive appraisal of the historical contribution of imagination to religious understanding and, as such, will be of great interest to philosophers, theologians and historians alike. (shrink)

In research on organizational environmentalism, there has been a repeated call for ways to go beyond the business case for sustainability frame. While the business case frame assumes that developing eco-friendly solutions can benefit firms financially, this article highlights the importance of challenging established understandings of sustainability. To this end, I introduce Deleuze’s distinction between morality and ethics. Morality involves passing judgements on the basis of values. Ethics provides an immanent evaluation of the principles by which specific solutions (...) are considered sustainable. Analysing interviews with architects, building engineers and business developers, the article shows how these actors reflect on the values that form the basis of their practice, but also try to imagine new ways of working with sustainability. In conclusion, the article suggests that an immanent ethics of organizational environmentalism can allow for the values that inform environmental efforts in organizations to be evaluated as well as alternative visions of sustainability to be created. (shrink)