While the literature in business ethics abounds with philosophical analyses, perspectives from religious thinkers are curiously underrepresented. What religious analysis has occured has often been moralistic in tone, more fit to the pulpit than the classroom or the boardroom. In the three essays that follow, presented originally at a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 1989, ethicists from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish traditions analyze a case study familiar to many who teach and (...) research in business ethics - the Consolidated Foods Case. Each author shows how a particular religious tradition might react to the case. The authors show how insights from their traditions would affect corporation's moral deliberations about policy. Specific policy recommendations are offered to CEO John Bryan. (shrink)

H. Richard Niebuhr's typology of the relation between Christ and culture can function as a heuristic device to identify different approaches to Christian business ethics. Five types are outlined: Christ Against Business, The Christ of Business, Christ Above Business, Christ and Business in Paradox, and Christ the Transformer of Business. This typology may facilitate discussion on the relative adequacy of various theological assumptions about ethical change in business.

This is the first extensive study of ecological virtue ethics and the new rhetoric of environmentalists. Based on a wide-ranging survey of environmental literature, Louke van Wensveen offers an overview of current "green" virtue language and proposes the basic elements of a matching ecological virtue theory, dubbed "dirty virtues" by ecological philosophers.Environmental ethics is not exhausted by debates about the need to preserve rivers, our duties to bioregions, and the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature; rather, ecoliterature also contains (...) a rich virtue language. Highlighting the integrity, diversity, internal tensions, dynamism, and visionary character of this ecological virtue language, the author shows both its historical roots and innovative features. Van Wensveen illustrates a widespread awareness of attitudes and habits that help or harm our relations with the nonhuman world. She includes a unique catalog of 189 virtues and 174 vices that mark the vision and praxis of people committed to ecological flourishing.The second part of Dirty Virtues presents carefully crafted criteria to help discern genuine virtue and vice in an ecological age. Her arguments are distinguished by a critical balance of moral sources, including Aristotelian virtue theory, Christian tradition, women's experiences, psychological theory, and metaphorical representations of nonhuman nature.Methodologically innovative and boldly interdisciplinary, Dirty Virtues will challenge and inspire virtue theorists, as well as environmental ethicists and theologians. (shrink)

Within an environmental virtue ethic belongs moderation for the sake of ecojustice. Named attunement, this virtue both resembles and differs from Aristotelian and Thomistic articulations of temperance. Principally expressed as frugality and moderation in diet, it includes: sensitivity to limits, acceptance of limits, joyous contentment, creativity, and readiness to sacrifice.

Within an environmental virtue ethic belongs moderation for the sake of ecojustice. Named attunement, this virtue both resembles and differs from Aristotelian and Thomistic articulations of temperance. Principally expressed as frugality and moderation in diet, it includes: sensitivity to limits, acceptance of limits, joyous contentment, creativity, and readiness to sacrifice.

I propose an ecologically attuned criterion for genuine virtue, namely, the criterion of ecosustainable virtue: a genuine virtue includes the goal of ensuring ecosystem sustainability. I show how this criterion emerges from environmental practice and how it can be supported by syllogistic reasoning.

Within an environmental virtue ethic belongs moderation for the sake of ecojustice. Named attunement, this virtue both resembles and differs from Aristotelian and Thomistic articulations of temperance. Principally expressed as frugality and moderation in diet, it includes: sensitivity to limits, acceptance of limits, joyous contentment, creativity, and readiness to sacrifice.

While the literature in business ethics abounds with philosophical analyses, perspectives from religious thinkers are curiously underrepresented. What religious analysis has occured has often been moralistic in tone, more fit to the pulpit than the classroom or the boardroom. In the three essays that follow, presented originally at a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 1989, ethicists from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish traditions analyze a case study familiar to many who teach and (...) research in business ethics — the Consolidated Foods Case. Each author shows how a particular religious tradition might react to the case. The authors show how insights from their traditions would affect corporation's moral deliberations about policy. Specific policy recommendations are offered to CEO John Bryan. (shrink)

H. Richard Niebuhr's typology of the relation between Christ and culture can function as a heuristic device to identify different approaches to Christian business ethics. Five types are outlined: Christ Against Business, The Christ of Business, Christ Above Business, Christ and Business in Paradox, and Christ the Transformer of Business. This typology may facilitate discussion on the relative adequacy of various theological assumptions about ethical change in business.

Within the last decade those familiar with environmental ethics have witnessed a resurgence of environmental virtue ethics. According to Louke van Wensveen, ecological virtue language is “rapidly growing” and “represents a distinct moral discourse with an internal unity and logic”—what she calls “an integral discourse.” Does the modern Catholic rights tradition have anything to contribute to this ethical discourse? Grounded historically in neo-Thomistic natural law and virtue ethics, Catholic social teaching originated as a response to late ninteenth- and (...) early twentieth-century social and economic crises. Out of this application emerged the virtue of solidarity. However, an analysis of recent discourse in environmental virtue ethics shows that the treatment of solidarity as an environmental virtue is rather thin in the literature. Nevertheless, with the development of solidarity and the expanding notion of the common good, inclusive of the planetary commons, in recent Catholic documents, solidarity is “translatable” into the realm of ecological virtue ethics. As an environmental virtue, solidarity should be interpreted as “biophilic solidarity” grounded in the genetic homology of evolutionary speciation, and defined as the consistent habit of character expressed in the recognition of our fundamental interrelatedness with the human and nonhuman. As a virtue biophilic solidarity takes explicit shape in determined active engagement to create, promote, and restore the universal common good of creation. In relation to the human-centered Catholic rights tradition, the status of nature is examined drawing on an axiological analysis of nature indicating that the natural world holds a spectrum of values including utilitarian and intrinsic value. The concluding reflection points to the shortfall of environmental virtue ethics without an accompanying social ethic in the interest of an ecological vision for a sustainable society. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Environmental Virtue EthicsChristopher Freiman (bio)Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro. New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, pp. 240. ISBN 0-7425-3389-1 (hardback), $75.00; ISBN 0-7425-3390-5 (paperback) $28.95.For most of its life, environmental ethics has been the province of consequentialism and deontology. But a growing number of environmental ethicists have found these act-centered theories too thin and limited to attend to the complexity of (...) ecological problems. Some see virtue ethics as promising a richer and more muscular approach to environmental ethics. The new anthology Environmental Virtue Ethics delivers on this promise.The book, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro, features fourteen selections—ten original contributions and four reprints of classic papers. The basic theme of environmental virtue ethics as a theory and Environmental Virtue Ethics as a volume is not that the environment is a bearer of rights or source of intrinsic value, but that an appreciation of nature is an ingredient in a happy and flourishing life. Virtue ethics considers character to be a central ethical concern and a critical part of living well. Rather than ask, as deontologists and utilitarians might, "What should I do?," virtue ethicists ask, "What should I be?"According to the first section of the book, environmental ethicists have implicitly been asking themselves this question for years. The first [End Page 133] two articles form a virtual genealogy of environmental virtue ethics, as Louke van Wensveen and Philip Cafaro examine virtue ethics' hidden role in the development of modern environmental ethics. Cafaro presents an account of historical exemplars of environmental virtue. Wensveen argues that the seeming poverty of "ecological virtue language" is partly due to environmental ethics' evolution within a specific cultural niche. Environmental ethics traditionally grappled with questions of practical political and legal import. As a result, the discipline adapted to the problems of rights and costs and benefits rather than character and human flourishing. Wensveen quips, "I imagine that appealing to a chemical company's love of nature in a court of law would be as effective as appealing to an ex-spouse's love of his or her children in a child custody case" (17). Nonetheless, Wensveen chronicles how virtue language has crept, largely unnoticed, into the environmental ethical dialogue.The second part focuses on the theoretical dimensions of environmental virtue ethics. The authors explore the ways in which virtue ethics can offer a fresh perspective on perennial environmental ethical questions. Thomas Hill's seminal "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments" is a welcome inclusion. Hill inspires the movement to environmental virtue theorizing when he advises us to ask not simply, "What interests or rights are at stake when one destroys the natural environment?" but also, "What sort of person would do such a thing?" Indeed, we might view this entire volume as an extended attempt to answer to Hill's question.The next part of the book investigates the problems of defining environmental virtue and distinguishing it from anthropocentric virtue. The fourth and final section applies environmental virtue theory to specific ecological problems. The two articles, written by Peter Wenz and Ronald Sandler, use the virtue ethical framework to interrogate the morality of consumerism and genetically modified crops, respectively. This final section helps to allay an enduring criticism of virtue ethics as a whole: that it cannot be applied to real world problems. Sandler's piece in particular profitably uses the tools of virtue ethics to critically reflect upon both the moral problems raised by genetically modified crops and their proposed resolutions.The role of enlightened self-interest in environmental ethics is a recurrent theme. Against a public dialogue that pits human interests and [End Page 134] ecological interests in conflict, this book is refreshing reminder that human flourishing and ecological flourishing are not enemies. Human interests, properly understood, are in harmony with the interests of the environment. We ought to view our relationship with nature as positive-sum.This positive-sum outlook permeates Philip Cafaro's piece, "Gluttony, Arrogance, Greed, and Apathy: An Exploration of Environmental Vice." Cafaro forcefully argues that the vices that hinder human flourishing also hinder... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Environmental Virtue EthicsChristopher Freiman (bio)Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro. New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, pp. 240. ISBN 0-7425-3389-1 (hardback), $75.00; ISBN 0-7425-3390-5 (paperback) $28.95.For most of its life, environmental ethics has been the province of consequentialism and deontology. But a growing number of environmental ethicists have found these act-centered theories too thin and limited to attend to the complexity of (...) ecological problems. Some see virtue ethics as promising a richer and more muscular approach to environmental ethics. The new anthology Environmental Virtue Ethics delivers on this promise.The book, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro, features fourteen selections—ten original contributions and four reprints of classic papers. The basic theme of environmental virtue ethics as a theory and Environmental Virtue Ethics as a volume is not that the environment is a bearer of rights or source of intrinsic value, but that an appreciation of nature is an ingredient in a happy and flourishing life. Virtue ethics considers character to be a central ethical concern and a critical part of living well. Rather than ask, as deontologists and utilitarians might, "What should I do?," virtue ethicists ask, "What should I be?"According to the first section of the book, environmental ethicists have implicitly been asking themselves this question for years. The first [End Page 133] two articles form a virtual genealogy of environmental virtue ethics, as Louke van Wensveen and Philip Cafaro examine virtue ethics' hidden role in the development of modern environmental ethics. Cafaro presents an account of historical exemplars of environmental virtue. Wensveen argues that the seeming poverty of "ecological virtue language" is partly due to environmental ethics' evolution within a specific cultural niche. Environmental ethics traditionally grappled with questions of practical political and legal import. As a result, the discipline adapted to the problems of rights and costs and benefits rather than character and human flourishing. Wensveen quips, "I imagine that appealing to a chemical company's love of nature in a court of law would be as effective as appealing to an ex-spouse's love of his or her children in a child custody case" (17). Nonetheless, Wensveen chronicles how virtue language has crept, largely unnoticed, into the environmental ethical dialogue.The second part focuses on the theoretical dimensions of environmental virtue ethics. The authors explore the ways in which virtue ethics can offer a fresh perspective on perennial environmental ethical questions. Thomas Hill's seminal "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments" is a welcome inclusion. Hill inspires the movement to environmental virtue theorizing when he advises us to ask not simply, "What interests or rights are at stake when one destroys the natural environment?" but also, "What sort of person would do such a thing?" Indeed, we might view this entire volume as an extended attempt to answer to Hill's question.The next part of the book investigates the problems of defining environmental virtue and distinguishing it from anthropocentric virtue. The fourth and final section applies environmental virtue theory to specific ecological problems. The two articles, written by Peter Wenz and Ronald Sandler, use the virtue ethical framework to interrogate the morality of consumerism and genetically modified crops, respectively. This final section helps to allay an enduring criticism of virtue ethics as a whole: that it cannot be applied to real world problems. Sandler's piece in particular profitably uses the tools of virtue ethics to critically reflect upon both the moral problems raised by genetically modified crops and their proposed resolutions.The role of enlightened self-interest in environmental ethics is a recurrent theme. Against a public dialogue that pits human interests and [End Page 134] ecological interests in conflict, this book is refreshing reminder that human flourishing and ecological flourishing are not enemies. Human interests, properly understood, are in harmony with the interests of the environment. We ought to view our relationship with nature as positive-sum.This positive-sum outlook permeates Philip Cafaro's piece, "Gluttony, Arrogance, Greed, and Apathy: An Exploration of Environmental Vice." Cafaro forcefully argues that the vices that hinder human flourishing also hinder... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Environmental Virtue EthicsChristopher Freiman (bio)Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro. New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, pp. 240. ISBN 0-7425-3389-1 (hardback), $75.00; ISBN 0-7425-3390-5 (paperback) $28.95.For most of its life, environmental ethics has been the province of consequentialism and deontology. But a growing number of environmental ethicists have found these act-centered theories too thin and limited to attend to the complexity of (...) ecological problems. Some see virtue ethics as promising a richer and more muscular approach to environmental ethics. The new anthology Environmental Virtue Ethics delivers on this promise.The book, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro, features fourteen selections—ten original contributions and four reprints of classic papers. The basic theme of environmental virtue ethics as a theory and Environmental Virtue Ethics as a volume is not that the environment is a bearer of rights or source of intrinsic value, but that an appreciation of nature is an ingredient in a happy and flourishing life. Virtue ethics considers character to be a central ethical concern and a critical part of living well. Rather than ask, as deontologists and utilitarians might, "What should I do?," virtue ethicists ask, "What should I be?"According to the first section of the book, environmental ethicists have implicitly been asking themselves this question for years. The first [End Page 133] two articles form a virtual genealogy of environmental virtue ethics, as Louke van Wensveen and Philip Cafaro examine virtue ethics' hidden role in the development of modern environmental ethics. Cafaro presents an account of historical exemplars of environmental virtue. Wensveen argues that the seeming poverty of "ecological virtue language" is partly due to environmental ethics' evolution within a specific cultural niche. Environmental ethics traditionally grappled with questions of practical political and legal import. As a result, the discipline adapted to the problems of rights and costs and benefits rather than character and human flourishing. Wensveen quips, "I imagine that appealing to a chemical company's love of nature in a court of law would be as effective as appealing to an ex-spouse's love of his or her children in a child custody case" (17). Nonetheless, Wensveen chronicles how virtue language has crept, largely unnoticed, into the environmental ethical dialogue.The second part focuses on the theoretical dimensions of environmental virtue ethics. The authors explore the ways in which virtue ethics can offer a fresh perspective on perennial environmental ethical questions. Thomas Hill's seminal "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments" is a welcome inclusion. Hill inspires the movement to environmental virtue theorizing when he advises us to ask not simply, "What interests or rights are at stake when one destroys the natural environment?" but also, "What sort of person would do such a thing?" Indeed, we might view this entire volume as an extended attempt to answer to Hill's question.The next part of the book investigates the problems of defining environmental virtue and distinguishing it from anthropocentric virtue. The fourth and final section applies environmental virtue theory to specific ecological problems. The two articles, written by Peter Wenz and Ronald Sandler, use the virtue ethical framework to interrogate the morality of consumerism and genetically modified crops, respectively. This final section helps to allay an enduring criticism of virtue ethics as a whole: that it cannot be applied to real world problems. Sandler's piece in particular profitably uses the tools of virtue ethics to critically reflect upon both the moral problems raised by genetically modified crops and their proposed resolutions.The role of enlightened self-interest in environmental ethics is a recurrent theme. Against a public dialogue that pits human interests and [End Page 134] ecological interests in conflict, this book is refreshing reminder that human flourishing and ecological flourishing are not enemies. Human interests, properly understood, are in harmony with the interests of the environment. We ought to view our relationship with nature as positive-sum.This positive-sum outlook permeates Philip Cafaro's piece, "Gluttony, Arrogance, Greed, and Apathy: An Exploration of Environmental Vice." Cafaro forcefully argues that the vices that hinder human flourishing also hinder... (shrink)

Mathematics and the Mind of God is the synopsis of a leture held at a symposium under this title at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1995. It takes a critical position with respect to the suggestion that there is a shortcut from the exact sciences to theology. It is true that mathematics is the pure form in which the exactness of these sciences can be expressed. The fundamental principle of it, however, the structurability of our world of experience, is (...) not expressible in mathematical form. It belongs to the subject matter of metaphysics, in the sense of rational relation of principles. Mystical experience and theological reflection are even beyond the realm of metaphysics, because they claim to transcend natural human reason. Jumping directly from science to theology therefore gives rise to many misunderstandings which are detrimental to both. (shrink)

Mathematics and the Mind of God is the synopsis of a leture held at a symposium under this title at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1995. It takes a critical position with respect to the suggestion that there is a shortcut from the exact sciences to theology. It is true that mathematics is the pure form in which the exactness of these sciences can be expressed. The fundamental principle of it, however, the structurability of our world of experience, is (...) not expressible in mathematical form. It belongs to the subject matter of metaphysics, in the sense of rational relation of principles. Mystical experience and theological reflection are even beyond the realm of metaphysics, because they claim to transcend natural human reason. Jumping directly from science to theology therefore gives rise to many misunderstandings which are detrimental to both. (shrink)

How should the Bible be used in Christian ethics? Although this question has been addressed many times, little attention has gone to how the Bible actually has functioned in constructing theological ethics. In this book, Siker describes and analyzes the Bible's various uses in the theology and ethics of eight of the twentieth century's most important and influential Christian theologians: Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Bernhard Haring, Paul Ramsey, Stanley Hauerwas, Gustavo Gutierrez, James Cone, and Rosemary Radford Ruether. In (...) approaching each author, Siker organizes his study around five related questions. First, which biblical texts does each author in fact use, and, second, in what ways do they use these texts? How does each envision the authority of the Bible? What kind of hermeneutic does the author employ? Finally, what has each author's particular approach to the Bible yielded in terms of Christian Ethics, or, in other words, what are the practical results? Siker ends each chapter with a critical evaluation of the various problems and prospects for the author's use of Scripture, and concludes the study with a comparison and contrast of all the authors' respective appropriations of the Sermon on the Mount. (shrink)

Gödel once offered an argument for the general reflection principle in set theory that took the form of an analogy with Leibniz' Monadology. I discuss the mathematical and philosophical background to Gödel's argument, reconstruct the proposed analogy in detail, and argue that it has no justificatory force.

While 4E approaches to cognition are increasingly introduced in educational contexts, little has been said about how 4E commitments can inform pedagogy aimed at fostering ethical competencies. Here, we evaluate a 4E-inspired ethics exercise that we developed at a technical university to enliven the moral imagination of engineering students. Our students participated in an interactive tinkering workshop, during which they materially redesigned a healthcare artifact. The aim of the workshop was twofold. Firstly, we wanted students to experience how material choices (...) at the levels of design and functionality can enable morally significant reimaginings of the affordances commonly associated with existing artifacts. We term this type of reimagining world-directed moral imagination. Secondly, through the design process, we wanted students to robustly place themselves in the lived embodied perspectives of (potential) users of their selected artifacts. We term this person-directed moral imagination. While student testimonies about the exercise indicate that both their world-directed and person-directed moral imagination were enlivened, we note that the fostering of robust person-directed moral imagination proved challenging. Using 4E insights, we diagnose this challenge and ask how it might be overcome. To this end, we engage extensively with a recent 4E-informed critique of person-directed moral imagination, raised by Clavel Vázquez and Clavel-Vázquez (2023). They argue that person-directed moral imagination is profoundly limited, if not fundamentally misguided, particularly when exercised in contexts marked by emphatic embodied situated difference between the imaginer and the imagined. Building upon insights from both the 4E field and testimonies from critical disability studies, we argue that, while their critique is valuable, it ultimately goes too far. We conclude that a 4E approach can take on board recent 4E warnings regarding the limits of person-directed moral imagination while contributing positively to the development of moral imagination in engineering ethics education. (shrink)

The ideal of mathematical exactness is strongly paradigmatic for modern science, for which Mathematics practically functions as a metaphysical foundation. This strongly influenced Philosophy. In our century, however, critical voices arise, even from the ranks of scientists. Reflection on the foundations of Mathematics has produced a deeper insight into its nature. The tendency to judge content by structure becomes less predominant. Metaphysics is no longer rejected as only producing constructions with unjustified claims to necessity. This book combines contemporary Philosophy of (...) Mathematics with classical philosophical themes. It replaces the anti-metaphysical tendencies of modern and postmodern Philosophy by an unrestricted horizon of epistemic perspectives. (shrink)

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies.

The church looks with great anticipation to the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter as opportunities for reflection on powerful passages of Scripture recalling the major events in our Christian story. In every liturgical year, however, there are 33 or 34 Sundays known as Ordinary Time that fall between those seasons. Must they be “ordinary”?

In this paper I address the current debate on ontic versus epistemic conceptualizations of mechanistic explanation in the mechanisms literature. Illari recently argued that good explanations are subject to both ontic and epistemic constraints: they must describe mechanisms in the world in such fashion that they provide understanding of their workings. Elaborating upon Illari’s ‘integration’ account, I argue that causal role function discovery of mechanisms and their components is an epistemic prerequisite for achieving these two aims. This analysis extends Illari’s (...) account in important ways, putting more pressure on ontic readings of mechanistic explanation and providing an answer to the question how ontic and epistemic constraints on mechanistic explanation are related. I argue these point in terms of cases on memory research drawn from neuroscience and research on extinct neurogenetic mechanisms from early nervous systems biology. (shrink)

This paper investigates conceptions of explanation, teleology, and analogy in the works of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Richards (2000, 2002) and Zammito (2006, 2012, 2018) have argued that Kant’s philosophy provided an obstacle for the project of establishing biology as a proper science around 1800. By contrast, Russell (1916), Outram (1986), and Huneman (2006, 2008) have argued, similar to suggestions from Lenoir (1989), that Kant’s philosophy influenced the influential naturalist Georges Cuvier. In this article, I wish to (...) expand on and further the work of Russell, Outram, and Huneman by adopting a novel perspective on Cuvier and considering (a) the similar conceptions of proper science and explanation of Kant and Cuvier, and (b) the similar conceptions of the role of teleology and analogy in the works of Kant and Cuvier. The similarities between Kant and Cuvier show, contrary to the interpretation of Richards and Zammito, that some of Kant’s philosophical ideas, whether they derived from him or not, were fruitfully applied by some life scientists who wished to transform life sciences into proper sciences around 1800. However, I also show that Cuvier, in contrast to Kant, had a workable strategy for transforming the life sciences into proper sciences, and that he departed from Kant’s philosophy of science in crucial respects. (shrink)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has already caused large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and will continue to do so for manyyears after hostilities have ceased mainly because of the emissions linked to the rebuilding of destroyed or damaged housing, public buildings, infrastructure, factories, and the like. My aim in this paper is to discuss how in a time of climate emergency such emissions of war should impact the political morality of states initiating, continuing, and (...) ending war (through a just and enduring peace) as understood by just war theory (JWT). My point of departure is a study by Lennard de Klerk and six co-authors detailing the emissions of the first year of the Russo-Ukrainian war. (shrink)