Man (Islam); Islamic philosophy; Islamic ethics.

Why is American punishment so cruel? While in continental Europe great efforts are made to guarantee that prisoners are treated humanely, in America sentences have gotten longer and rehabilitation programs have fallen by the wayside. Western Europe attempts to prepare its criminals for life after prison, whereas many American prisons today leave their inhabitants reduced and debased. In the last quarter of a century, Europe has worked to ensure that the baser human inclination toward vengeance is not reflected by state (...) policy, yet America has shown a systemic drive toward ever increasing levels of harshness in its criminal policies. Why is America so short on mercy? In this deeply researched, comparative work, James Q. Whitman reaches back to the 17th and 18th centuries to trace how and why American and European practices came to diverge. Eschewing the usual historical imprisonment narratives, Whitman focuses instead on intriguing differences in the development of punishment in the age of Western democracy. European traditions of social hierarchy and state power, so consciously rejected by the American colonies, nevertheless supported a more merciful and dignified treatment of offenders. The hierarchical class system on the continent kept alive a tradition of less-degrading "high-status" punishments that eventually became applied across the board in Europe. The distinctly American, draconian regime, on the other hand, grows, Whitman argues, out of America's longstanding distrust of state power and its peculiar, broad-brush sense of egalitarianism. Low-status punishments were evenly meted out to all offenders, regardless of class or standing. America's unrelentingly harsh treatment of trangressors--this "equal opportunity degradation"-- is, in a very real sense, the dark side of the nation's much vaunted individualism. A sobering look at the growing rift between the United States and Europe, Harsh Justice exposes the deep cultural roots of America's degrading punishment practices. (shrink)

Why battles matter -- Accepting the wager of battle -- Laying just claim to the profits of war -- The monarchical monopolization of military violence -- Were there really rules? -- The death of pitched battle.

These essays argue that to have good character one needs to have at least developed a sense of empathy and self control.

An enquiry into plant consciousness requires, on the one hand, taking into account recent experiments in plant biology and, on the other hand, refining the theoretical framework of behaviour and the various degrees of cognition. The main goal of this contribution is to advance such a framework by comparing classical animal and human cognition approaches with the theories of minimal cognition. This leads us to interpret more carefully the various plant activities and to highlight the limits of classical theories of (...) zoocentric cognition. In particular, the article shows that the notions of cognition and consciousness are often abusively confused, and with that of behaviour. Once this ambiguity is removed, it is possible to better distinguish several meanings of consciousness and to evaluate their relevance to plant activities. (shrink)

In the May Fourth era of the 1910s and 1920s, Confucius' image was associated closely with the conservative political forces that were increasingly regarded by many as the cause of the challenges the newly founded Republic was facing. With respect to Confucius, Hu Shi believed that the critical attitude engendered in the May Fourth era had brought Confucius down from a high pedestal and put him on a par with the contemporaries of his time. Hu Shi's main assessment of Confucius (...) as an ancient philosopher was shown in his doctoral dissertation and the later published A History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy, both appeared in the May Fourth era. During the May Fourth era, the interest in distinguishing “historical Confucius” from “iconic Confucius” was conducive to the emergence of the National Studies Movement, led by Zhang Taiyan, Hu Shi, Liang Qichao, and others. (shrink)

Marxist Historiographies is the first book to examine the ebb and flow of Marxist historiography from a global and cross-cultural perspective. Since the eighteenth century, few schools of historical thought have exerted a more lasting impact than Marxism, and this impact extends far beyond the Western world within which it is most commonly analysed. Edited by two highly respected authors in the field and taking a truly global perspective on this topic, Marxist Historiographies demonstrates clearly the breadth and depth of (...) Marxism's influence in historical writing throughout the world and is essential reading for all students of historiography. (shrink)

Examining turning points in historical thought in a variety of cultures, the essay here deal with reorientations in historical thinking in the pre-modern period since Antiquity, mainly in ancient Greece and China and in medieval Christian Europe.

In this study, we examine the nature of the relationship between ethical leadership and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), defined as unethical behavior conducted by employees with the aim of benefiting their organization, and whether the strength of the relationship differs between subordinates experiencing high and low identification with supervisor. Based on three-wave survey data obtained from 239 public sector employees in China, we find that ethical leadership has an inverted u-shaped (curvilinear) relationship with UPB. As the level of ethical leadership (...) increases from low to moderate, UPB increases; as the level of ethical leadership increases from moderate to high, UPB decreases. Further, we find that the strength of this inverted u-curve relationship differs between subordinates with high and low identification with supervisor. That is to say, the inverted u-shaped relationship between ethical leadership and UPB was stronger when subordinates experienced high levels of identification with supervisor. The theoretical and managerial implications of our findings for understanding how to manage UPB in an organizational context are discussed. (shrink)

Includes a study of Durkheim's "The rules of Sociological method".

Nietzsche tells us at the end of Beyond Good and Evil that ‘I would go so far as to venture an order of rank among philosophers according to the rank of their laughter’. Nietzsche violently dislikes those philosophers who, as he puts it, have ‘sought to bring laughter into disrepute’. He particularly singles out Thomas Hobbes for this offence, adding that Hobbes's puritanical attitude is just what you would expect from an Englishman. Nietzsche's accusation is based, as it happens, on (...) a misquotation of what Hobbes says about laughter in philosophy. But Nietzsche was undoubtedly right to point out that Hobbes — in common with most thinkers of his age — took it for granted that laughter is a subject in which philosophers need to be seriously interested. My aim in what follows will be to investigate the grounds and origins of this belief, and then to seek to explain it. (shrink)

Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm; -1641; Islamic philosophy.