The forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China's dictatorship, writes Waller R. Newell in this engaging exposé of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny is a permanent threat by following its strange career from Homeric Bronze Age warriors, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome, to the medieval struggle between the City of God and the City of (...) Man, leading to the state-building despots of the Modern Age including the Tudors and 'enlightened despots' such as Peter the Great. The book explores the psychology of tyranny from Nero to Gaddafi, and how it changes with the Jacobin Terror into millenarian revolution. Stimulating and enlightening, Tyrants: Power, Injustice, and Terror will appeal to anyone interested in the danger posed by tyranny and terror in today's world. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Freedom from Rousseau to Heidegger launched a great protest against modern liberal individualism, inspired by the virtuous political community of the ancient Greeks. Hegel argued that the progress of history was gradually bringing about greater freedom and restoring our lost sense of community. But his successors Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger rejected Hegel's version of the end of history with its legitimization of the bourgeois nation-state. They sought to replace it with ever more utopian, apocalyptic and illiberal visions (...) of the future: Marx's Socialism, Nietzsche's Overman, and Heidegger's commitment to Nazism. This book combines an exceptionally clear and rich study of these thinkers with a deep dive into the extent to which their views fed the political catastrophes of revolution, tyranny and genocide, including the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, Nazis, Khmer Rouge, ISIS and populist nationalism, but argues that the Philosophy of Freedom remains indispensable for understanding today's world. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

One could describe political philosophy from the Enlightenment to the present, or at least until World War II, as largely an exercise in defining true freedom, as well as a call to liberate the mas...

What are the types of action at issue in the free will and moral responsibility debate? Are the neuroscientists who make claims about free will and moral responsibility studying those types of action? If not, can the existing paradigm in the field be modified to study those types of action? This paper outlines some claims made by neuroscientists about the inefficacy of conscious intentions and the implications of this inefficacy for the existence of free will. It argues that, typically, the (...) types of actions at issue in the philosophical literature require proximal or distal conscious decisions and have the right kind of connection to reasons. It points out that neuroscientists are not studying this class of actions, as their studies focus on simple commanded actions (e.g., finger flex) and simple Buridan choices (e.g., push the left or right button). Finally, it argues that neuroscience already has the resources to study the types of action relevant for free will and moral responsibility and outlines two experiments which focus on skilled actions and moral choices that could be run using the available technology. (shrink)

While the balance between individual privacy and government monitoring or corporate surveillance has been a frequent topic across numerous disciplines, the issue of privacy within the family has been largely ignored in recent privacy debates. Yet privacy intrusions between parents and children or between adult partners or spouses can be just as profound as those found in the more “public spheres” of life. Popular access to increasingly sophisticated forms of electronic surveillance technologies has altered the dynamics of family relationships. Monitoring, (...) mediated and facilitated by practices of both covert and overt electronic surveillance, has changed the nature of privacy within the family. Parents are tracking children via GPS-enabled cell phone tracking software and are monitoring the Internet use of family members. Parents, siblings, and children are also posting information about their family members online, often without consent, and are creating social media profiles for others online. Prior scholarly work in philosophy and law has primarily addressed the privacy of children from third parties, usually commercial entities, and in the context of making medical decisions. Less attention has been directed at exploring a more general right of privacy of one family member against parents, siblings, children, or spouses. In this article, we do just that. We consider several moral rules that determine appropriate privacy boundaries within the family. More specifically, we will consider when overt or covert surveillance of a child, spouse, or partner by an adult family member is morally permitted. (shrink)

Autonomy is good for you. A strong sense of competent self-control and effective choice-making promotes both physical and psychological well-being. Loss of autonomous control—and a sense of helplessness—causes depression, increased sensitivity to pain, greater vulnerability to disease, and death. Well established by a wide range of psychological and physiological studies, the positive effects of patient autonomy are well known to competent physicians, nurses, and therapists. Conscientious caregivers are thus moving beyond grudging acceptance of informed consent toward clinical respect for patient (...) autonomy. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of ethical fit on employee attitudes and intentions to turnover. The results of this investigation provides support for the conjecture that ethical work climate is an important variable in the study of person-organization fit. Ethical fit was found to be significantly related to turnover intentions, continuance commitment, and affective commitment, but not to job satisfaction. Results are discussed in regard to some of the affective and cognitive distinctions among satisfaction, commitment, and behavioral intentions.

This article argues that we live in a highly technical world in which people are disappearing. Religion does not have the tools to help us resist this extinction since it has itself diminished humanity by positing a perfect Other Being, which controls our lives. The author argues that we need to reclaim a sense of ourselves as essentialising animals. We need to have a more body-based sense of humanity, which will lead to a fuller awareness and acceptance of difference and (...) combat hierarchical and alienating thinking. (shrink)

In this paper I begin by arguing that there are significant intellectual and normative continuities between pre-Victorian hereditarianism and later Victorian eugenical ideologies. Notions of mental heredity and of the dangers of transmitting hereditary ‘taints’ were already serious concerns among medical practitioners and laymen in the early nineteenth century. I then show how the Victorian period witnessed an increasing tendency for these traditional concerns about hereditary transmission and the integrity of bloodlines to be projected onto the level of national health. (...) Tracing the gradual emergence of eugenical thought, I also highlight some of the more fundamental social, political and intellectual factors that promoted this predilection for extrapolating from the individual lineage to the nation and race. In doing so I argue that fully fledged eugenical thought was always unlikely to emerge prior to the early Victorian period. However, I am also able to show that Francis Galton's 1865 eugenical proposals were far from innovative and that identifying him as the ‘father’ of the eugenics movement is highly misleading. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a relationship between the ethical climate of the organization and the development of person-organization fit. The relationship between an individual's stage of moral development and his/her perceived ethical work environment was examined using a sample of 86 working students. Results indicate that a match between individual preferences and present position proved most satisfying. Subjects expressing a match between their preferences for an ethical work climate and their present ethical work (...) climate indicated that they were less likely to leave their positions. (shrink)

BackgroundThis paper discusses the contentious issue of reuse of stored biological samples and data obtained from research participants in past clinical research to answer future ethical and scientifically valid research questions. Many countries have regulations and guidelines that guide the use and exportation of stored biological samples and data. However, there are variations in regulations and guidelines governing the reuse of stored biological samples and data in Sub-Saharan Africa including Malawi.DiscussionThe current research ethics regulations and guidelines in Malawi do not (...) allow indefinite storage and reuse of biological samples and data for future unspecified research. This comes even though the country has managed to answer pertinent research questions using stored biological samples and data. We acknowledge the limited technical expertise and equipment unavailable in Malawi that necessitates exportation of biological samples and data and the genuine concern raised by the regulatory authorities about the possible exploitation of biological samples and data by researchers. We also acknowledge that Malawi does not have bio-banks for storing biological samples and data for future research purposes. This creates room for possible exploitation of biological samples and data collected from research participants in primary research projects in Malawi. However, research ethics committees require completion and approval of material transfer agreements and data transfer agreements for biological samples and data collected for research purposes respectively and this requirement may partly address the concern raised by the regulatory authorities. Our concern though is that there is no such requirement for biological samples and data collected from patients for clinical or diagnostic purposes.SummaryIn conclusion, we propose developing a medical data and material transfer agreement for biological samples and data collected from patients for clinical or diagnostic purposes in both public and private health facilities that may end up in research centers outside Malawi. We also propose revision of the current research ethics regulations and guidelines in Malawi in order to allow secondary use of biological samples and data collected from primary research projects as a way of maximizing the use of collected samples and data. Finally, we call for consultation of all stakeholders within the Malawi research community when regulatory authorities are developing policies that govern research in Malawi. (shrink)

In this article the author makes the case for a hybrid sourcehood–leeway compatibilist account of free will. To do so, she draws upon Lehrer’s writing on free will, including his preference-based compatibilist account and Frankfurt-style cases from the perspective of the cognizant agent. The author explores what distinguishes kinds of intentional influence in manipulation cases and applies this distinction to a new perspectival variant of Frankfurt cases, those from the perspective of the counterfactual intervenor. She argues that it matters what (...) kind of intentional influence is at issue in the counterfactual intervention and, further, that our judgments about desert of praise are affected by occupying the POV of the counterfactual intervenor. The author concludes that such attention to perspectival variants of Frankfurt cases supports the view that compatibilist sourcehood accounts of moral responsibility require an additional compatibilist could-have-done-otherwise condition to capture a more robust sense of moral responsibility. (shrink)

It is hypothesized that human faces judged to be attractive by people possess two features—averageness and symmetry—that promoted adaptive mate selection in human evolutionary history by way of production of offspring with parasite resistance. Facial composites made by combining individual faces are judged to be attractive, and more attractive than the majority of individual faces. The composites possess both symmetry and averageness of features. Facial averageness may reflect high individual protein heterozygosity and thus an array of proteins to which parasites (...) must adapt. Heterozygosity may be an important defense of long-lived hosts against parasites when it occurs in portions of the genome that do not code for the essential features of complex adaptations. In this case heterozygosity can create a hostile microenvironment for parasites without disrupting adaptation. Facial bilateral symmetry is hypothesized to affect positive beauty judgments because symmetry is a certification of overall phenotypic quality and developmental health, which may be importantly influenced by parasites. Certain secondary sexual traits are influenced by testosterone, a hormone that reduces immunocompetence. Symmetry and size of the secondary sexual traits of the face (e.g., cheek bones) are expected to correlate positively and advertise immunocompetence honestly and therefore to affect positive beauty judgments. Facial attractiveness is predicted to correlate with attractive, nonfacial secondary sexual traits; other predictions from the view that parasite-driven selection led to the evolution of psychological adaptations of human beauty perception are discussed. The view that human physical attractiveness and judgments about human physical attractiveness evolved in the context of parasite-driven selection leads to the hypothesis that both adults and children have a species-typical adaptation to the problem of identifying and favoring healthy individuals and avoiding parasite-susceptible individuals. It is proposed that this adaptation guides human decisions about nepotism and reciprocity in relation to physical attractiveness. (shrink)

This study considers the ethical decision making of individual employees and the influence their perception of organizational expectations has on employee feelings about the decision making process. A self-administered questionnaire design was used for gathering data in this study, with a sample size of 245 full-time employees. The match between the ethical alternative chosen by the respondent and that alternative perceived to be encouraged by his/her organization was found to be significantly related to both feelings of discomfort and feelings of (...) intrapersonal role conflict. Implications for these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Emotions change over time. A comprehensive understanding of emotions will require that their temporal nature be observed and analysed. By observing emotion over time, one can disentangle and simultaneously analyse temporal variability within individuals and between-individual variability using a two-step process approach. First, within-person temporal patterns (e.g., covariation, lead–lag relation, periodicity, etc.) are assessed for each subject. Second, between-person analyses are conducted on the within-person patterns. These two steps can be done simultaneously with hierarchical linear models (HLM) or in two (...) actual steps with the process approach. HLM is limited to the intra-individual analysis of linear patterns (e.g., slope, intercept), whereas the process approach can be used to examine non-linear aspects of intra-individual change, such as multivariate patterns, within-subject skew, or phase relations between oscillating processes. In this paper we provide a description of the process approach and present several examples of, as well as suggestions for, intra-individual analysis applied to emotion and individual differences. (shrink)

In Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral (...) responsibility. Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms--including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts--is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want--natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities--would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.2 (2004) 125-128 [Access article in PDF] Comparing Psychoanalytic and Cognitive-Behavioral Perspectives on Control Bruce N. Waller Keywords freedom, locus of control, psychoanalysis, self-efficacy, volition Cognitive behavioral research on locus of control and self-efficacy has produced an extensive body of empirical results that might prove useful to psychoanalytic researchers endeavoring to strengthen the empirical foundation of psychoanalytic therapy. Cognitive-behaviorists and psychoanalysts share a common (...) interest in the importance of perspectives and belief systems and their impact on individual freedom, and comparative research on therapeutic effectiveness could yield benefits for both therapeutic approaches.Locus of control and self-efficacy are central elements in cognitive-behavioral psychology, and they play an important role in cognitive-behavioral therapy. Although the psychoanalytic approach does not explicitly employ those concepts, psychoanalytic therapists are obviously concerned with problems of effective action and internal obstacles to action. Attention to these two perspectives and their overlapping interests offers potential benefits for both the cognitive-behavioral and the psychodynamic approaches to psychological research and therapy.One potential benefit is the development of useful tools for advancing empirically based research on psychoanalysis. As Lehrer (1999) states, it is advantageous to ground psychoanalysis in "firm empirical evidence whenever possible." Although there have obviously been significant positive steps in that direction (Singer 2003; Weiss 1995, 1988; Weiss and Sampson 1986), psychoanalytic researchers have recognized that one source of difficulty is in finding clearly measurable research objectives and hypotheses (Burgin 2002). Cognitive-behavioral research on locus of control and self-efficacy has produced an extensive body of research using clear measurement standards that could prove useful in the empiricist approach to psychodynamic theories. In particular, those cognitive-behavioral research findings might offer a means of extending empirical investigation of psychodynamic theory in a direction usually regarded as difficult to test empirically: the study of psychoanalytic effectiveness to "change your way of seeing" (Lieberman 1999). Shifting locus of control or efficacy expectations in specific domains (Bandura 1997) [End Page 125] would empirically confirm the effectiveness of psychoanalytic techniques. It might well be that some efficacy expectations are enhanced more effectively by psychodynamic processes than by cognitive-behavioral therapy, or that psychoanalysis is effective in enhancing some specific efficacy expectations but not others. This could potentially extend the empirical examination of psychoanalytic theory as well as provide a base of comparison with cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques.Although self-efficacy enhancement might be a fruitful empirical test for psychodynamic therapy, therapeutic intervention to modify locus of control potentially could be even more productive. Current research indicates that one's orientation toward locus of control is a relatively stable characteristic, although it can be modified (Holyrod et al. 1984; Rotter 1979; Sadow and Hopkins 1993). One reason for locus of control stability may be that the locus of control imposes a perspective on the conceptualization of all one's experiences: from a strong internal locus of control perspective I view failures and successes as largely my own doing, whereas from an external locus perspective even my most effective efforts are seen as events that were outside my control: "I guess it was just my time to do well on a math exam," rather than "My hard work for that exam really paid off." (Lieberman makes this phenomenon quite clear in his excellent discussion of transparency.) Although locus of control is not easily modified, it is important to find effective means of helping subjects to achieve such changes, because research shows that a strong internal locus of control is positively correlated with success in work, sports, studies, marriage, and psychological adjustment (Lefcourt 1981, 1992), as well as with better health care behavior and better health (Bandura 1977; Schorr and Rodin 1982; Schulz 1976; Schulz and Hanusa 1978; Wallston 1993). Those deeply enmeshed in an external locus of control enjoy less real freedom and suffer severe disadvantages.How does one effect a shift in such a basic orientation? Not easily. From a psychoanalytic approach, the key will lie in recognizing and reconceptualizing the beliefs that impede effective action. Cognitive-behaviorists are more likely to... (shrink)

In their important work on locus equations, Sussman and his colleagues have helped to simplify the theoretical problem of how human listeners identify place of articulation contrasts among consonants, but much work remains before this problem is solved.

The patient's right to informed consent is grudgingly acknowledged by medical professionals, firmly established in law, and brandished as a shibboleth by most bioethicists. But questions remain concerning genuine patient autonomy, and the doctrine of informed consent offers inadequate answers. In addition to the continuing controversy over what counts as “informed,” the passive acquiescence implied by “consent” seems a pale shadow of genuine autonomy.

Life threatening emergencies involving infants and children are inherently dramatic, tension-filled situations. It is no wonder, then, that depictions of such events can be found in literature by and about doctors. In many ways, too, such depictions can illuminate key aspects of such events, such as the physician's own anxiety and the tensions between the various people involved, better than the medical literature. Hence it is suggested that the study of literary depictions of pediatric emergencies might be a useful adjunct (...) for those, physicians and other health care providers, who are called upon to manage them. (shrink)

A symphony of Gustav Mahler becomes a cathartic experience following the death of a beloved goat.

This provocative book outlines a powerful and original theory of liberty structured by the liberal conception of justice and the rule of law. Drawing on insights from philosophy, political theory, economics, and law, he shows how this new conception of liberty can confront, and solve, the central societal problems of knowledge, interest, and power.