While fidelity is a crucial aspect of Jacques Derrida’s thinking as it pertains to issues of faith, ethics, and responsibility, this key position in deconstructionist discourse has hardly yet been brought to light. Less still have the biopolitical resonances of Derrida’s work, with its careful attention to the terms and stakes of life particularly in his later writing, been considered as a deconstructionist practice of fidelity and infidelity in its own right. In pursuing these threads, this essay (...) argues that thinking a deconstructionist ethics through fidelity and biopolitics makes possible the crafting of a new philosophical weave for catching our responsibilities to others – to the very otherness of life itself – that Derridean hospitality opens up. Taken together in this way, a deconstructionist fidelity to life otherwise, to a biopolitics to come, makes possible an infidelity to political order as we know it that explodes the limitations of biopolitical theory. In squinting, blinking, tearing up, and listening, the borders of life are blurred in an ambivalent ethics of a transness within which life itself is made to waver and arrive anew. (shrink)

Richard Hare described the "ethical fanatic" as an agent who appeared to be able to rationally universalize morally horrendous values by "fanatically" accepting the consequences of those values even if their universalization harmed the original agent. This challenges the project of basing ethics on universalization tests, as advocated by Hare, Immanuel Kant, and others. Hare later argued that fanatics are irrational by appealing to a "principle of prudence," but this violates his meta-principle of not basing fundamental ethical principles upon (...) intuitions which are not themselves shown to be required by reason. This failure is corrected by using the concept of "pragmatic implication" to show that any agent's reliance upon any ethical principle commits her to a higher-ordered principle which justifies commitment to the original principle. This threatens an infinite regress, which can only be closed by a unique meta-principle. It is shown that all possible alternatives to this principle fail to actually end the regress, and all strategies of ignoring the regress also entail practical inconsistency. Hence, ethical universalization tests are not empty; they support unique ethical principles whose content does not depend upon the particular values of actual agents. (shrink)

This title is playful, of course. It is designed merely to attract curiosity and attention … It dates back to a childhood game of which I have forgotten both rules and stakes. An imaginary sovereign was roused from his indifference and responded with an approximate repetition of Marie-Antoinette's suggestion that if the people were hungry, food should be thrown to them. I took such caricatures of kings as anti-models, replacing bread with symbols. Now we are all too disturbed, individually and (...) collectively, by the economic discomfort which is a generalized hunger and, in too many parts of the world and - not only in the third world - by actual famines, not to be aware, on a daily basis, of the responsibility it is to cultivate and transmit to others substance which is purely symbolic. Certain statistics, which now form part of our daily life, are capable of discrediting definitively the ivory tower which our universities are accused of representing, or of having represented in the past. In my own country, Canada, one child in five lives in poverty. The economic worth of the poorest forty-eight countries in the world is equal to the combined wealth of the ten richest individuals. There were twenty million refugees in 1997. One billion two hundred million human beings are short of fresh water this year, etc. This type of figure is, sadly, all too familiar. And it is a case of preaching to the converted to assert the extent to which culture, education and all their constituent disciplines are nourishment of a different order to physical food, because intellectual work is genuine work, providing a living for those who work at it professionally, and above all also those who benefit from its immediate and continuing fruits - i.e. ideally, the whole of society, and in all countries. In this respect - and this is implicit, but through depending habitually on what is implicit nothing is ever sufficiently explicit - it is generally acknowledged (thanks to UNESCO in particular) to what extent the development of economic resources is linked with the advancement and communication of knowledge, on a scale which is regional as well as national, within cities, rural communities, families. (shrink)

The centenary of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology was recognised in 2013 with the publication of a volume of essays dedicated to his work. Leading phenomenological-psychopathologists and philosophers of psychiatry examined Jaspers notion of empathic understanding and his declaration that certain schizophrenic phenomena are ‘un-understandable’. The consensus reached by the authors was that Jaspers operated with a narrow conception of phenomenology and empathy and that schizophrenic phenomena can be understood through what they variously called second-order and radical empathy. This article (...) offers a critical examination of the second-order empathic stance along phenomenological and ethical lines. It asks: Is second-order empathy possible? Is the second-order empathic stance an ethically acceptable attitude towards persons diagnosed with schizophrenia? I argue that second-order empathy is an incoherent method that cannot be realised. Further, the attitude promoted by this method is ethically problematic insofar as the emphasis placed on radical otherness disinvests persons diagnosed with schizophrenia from a fair chance to participate in the public construction of their identity and, hence, to redress traditional symbolic injustices. (shrink)

The modern world, described by theorists of various fields as being subject to a continuous secularization process, is increasingly being perceived as the keeper of a mythical fund. The anthropological analysis of modernity invites to a new way of discussing and using myth, ritual, the sacred, religion in order to describe a significant modern experience. This experience typical to the modern man is mediated, and often even created by the mass media. Such an experience would not be perceptible outside (...) the lay context of the modern world, characterized by the presence of a weak transcendence. This favors the development of a mass culture, with various subcultures, as well as various professional cultures, in which a search for authenticity opens a wide space for the cohabitation of traditional religions and the weak forms of experience and manifestation of the sacred. In order to have this discussion I have chosen one of the most representative Romanian authors in the field of mass media anthropology. His analyses persuade us that the mass media is, among others, an instrument of symbolic construction of reality, and plays in the modern society the same part that myth used to play in traditional societies. (shrink)

The first clear and faithful guide to the timeless, practical teachings of the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Stoicism, the most influential philosophy of the Roman Empire, offers refreshingly modern ways to strengthen our inner character in the face of an unpredictable world. Widely recognized as the most talented and humane writer of the Stoic tradition, Seneca teaches us to live with freedom and purpose. His most enduring work, over a hundred "Letters from a Stoic" written to a close friend, explains how (...) to handle adversity; overcome grief, anxiety, and anger; transform setbacks into opportunities for growth; and recognize the true nature of friendship. In Breakfast with Seneca, philosopher David Fideler mines Seneca's classic works in a series of focused chapters, clearly explaining Seneca's ideas without oversimplifying them. Best enjoyed as a daily ritual, like an energizing cup of coffee, Seneca's wisdom provides us with a steady stream of time-tested advice about the human condition-which, as it turns out, hasn't changed much over the past two thousand years. (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

In this article we briefly summarize how converging technologies challenge elements of the existing symbolic order, as shown in the contributions to this special issue. We then identify the vision of ‘life as a do it yourself kit’ as a common denominator in the various forms of convergence and proceed to show how this vision provokes unrest and debate about existing moral frameworks and taboos. We conclude that, just as the problems of the industrial revolution sparked off the (...) now broadly established ideal of sustainability the converging technologies should be governed by the ideal of ‘human sustainability’. The essence of this ideal is formed by the ongoing discussion about the extent to which we may, or should want to, ‘make’ our environment and ourselves, and when it is better to simply accept what is given and what happens to us. (shrink)

The article assesses Arthur Schopenhauer’s reinterpretation of religious myths, particularly those of Christianity, in terms of his philosophical system, and applies his ideas to the mythical cosmology of shamanistic and animistic religions. Schopenhauer, a 19th-century Romantic philosopher, although an atheist himself, took religious myths very seriously, translating them into the terms of his metaphysical system. His view was that Roman Catholicism, for him the true form of Christianity, shared the pessimism and the focus on suffering of Hinduism and Buddhism, rather (...) than the alleged optimism of Protestantism, Judaism and Islam, excepting the myth of the Fall. For Schopenhauer, this pessimism was evident in the central symbol of Christianity, the figure of the crucified Christ. Schopenhauer put forward his ethic of compassion (and asceticism), aligning him, despite his atheism, with the altruistic ethics of the major world religions. The article also explores the extent to which Schopenhauer’s philosophy as, arguably, a form of panpsychism can be applied to shamanistic and animistic religions. While Schopenhauer translated religious myths into his metaphysical terms – based ultimately on Kant’s distinction between phenomena (things as they appear) and noumena (things as they are) – his understanding of the noumenon as the universal will to life was itself an explanatory myth for an essentially unknowable reality. Therefore, the attempt of Schopenhauer’s philosophy to translate myth into metaphysics in turn contained a myth at its very core. Nonetheless, the article argues that Schopenhauer’s argument may satisfy those dissatisfied with materialism’s shortcomings yet not willing to subscribe to a supernatural order.Contribution: The article applies to shamanism and animism the neglected philosopher Schopenhauer’s method of interpreting religious myths in terms of his metaphysical system, relating this very briefly to current philosophical debates on panpsychism. (shrink)

The question of whether Do Not Resuscitate orders should be sustained in the operating room was brought to our ethics committee by a pulmonologist and involved one of his patients for whom he serves as a primary care physician. His patient, a woman with chronic obstructive lung disease was electing, for comfort purposes, to have a hip pinning following a fracture. At the same time, she wished to have a DNR order covering her entire hospital stay. The anesthesiologist (...) described her direction as “improper” and refused to participate in surgical procedures if DNR orders extended to the operating room. The patient refused to rescind the order during surgery. As a result, the surgery was canceled to the great chagrin of the patient. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics. By RoMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. x +204. $24.95. What we learn from Holy Scripture about the kind of life which God commands us to lead depends in key part upon our prior natural and rational understanding of many of the key expressions used in Scripture. So it is with those expressions which (...) name and characterize the virtues. We are commanded not only to do certain types of action and to refrain from others, but also to become a certain type of person, one whose qualities of character are such that our actions spring from and give expression to those qualities. We are required not only to do what is just and courageous and temperate, but to do it because we ourselves have become just, courageous, and temperate, injunctions that we could not adequately understand, let alone obey, were it not for a prior knowledge of what these virtues are and what it is that makes them virtues. Moreover we also learn from Scripture about how we fail and about how we are called to account for our failures in the virtues. So we need also to know what it is to develop the virtues and what it is to fail or to be frustrated in that development. Few Christians are or can be theorists of the virtues; but every Christian by her or his actions presupposes the truth of some kind of theory of the virtues and of their development, a theory which, even when not explicitly articulated, enables her or him to find application for the Scriptures in the actions and transactions of everyday life. And every pastor and preacher has to draw upon the resources of some such theory. No theory of this kind can be adequate unless it satisfies two standards: that of fidelity to Scripture and that of conformity to the best understanding which philosophy and the human sciences afford of how human beings are constituted by appetites, passions, will, and reason. What would the content and structure of such a theory, satisfying these two standards, have to be? This is the question posed and answered by Romanus Cessario in his unusually important, stimulating, and incisive book. The content and structure of the theory which he presents are essentially Thomistic, but his theory is only incidentally and in part a historical exposition of St. Thomas's account. It is Thomistic rather in that it uses resources drawn from that account in order to address issues in contemporary moral theology, resources which enable him to identify and to formulate crucial but sometimes neglected 339 340 BOOK REVIEWS questions, as well as to propose answers to them. And in so doing, as we shall see, he presses inquiry to a point such that he needs to go he· yond what St. Thomas provides. Cessario's claim throughout is that the teaching of Scripture can become adequately intelligible to us only in the light afforded by a systematic understanding of the virtues, moral, intellectual, and theological. The only plausible alternatives to the type of theory which he proposes do not include some type of atheoretical reliance on scripture. Plausible alternative standpoints always involve open or covert appeal to some other rival type of moral theory. And Cessario from time to time provides acute and telling criticisms of some of the alternatives more influential at present. But he is careful to avoid :more than a bare minimum of such polemic, sometimes even too careful. In his first chapter, for example, Cessario recognizes that what he has to say about the radical nature of the transformation of character required by the Christian life and of the distinctive qualities of that life puts him at odds with certain theses of Karl Rahner. He notes almost in passing that it is his allegiance to metaphysical realism (with its claims about the teleological ordering of human nature) which gen· erates this conflict with Rahner's positions-positions which of course depend heavily on Heideggerian borrowings. But he never pursues the philosophical issues which divide Thomistic metaphysics from Rahner's blending of Heidegger with a theology aptly... (shrink)

The central themes of Jesus’ preaching, the kingdom and household of God, are root metaphors expressing the symbolic universe of God’s patronage subverting patronage and patriarchy structuring contemporary Mediterranean society, thus legitimising an anti-hierarchical community of faith. This dominant focus of Jesus’ message was discarded, as society’s prevalent patronage and patriarchy became the societal structure of the later faith communities. Today, patronage and patriarchy still forms the social structure for a large sector of Christian communities and many cultures, resulting (...) in inequality, injustice, exploitation and suffering. This article proposes that the only remedy for the faithful is a return to Jesus’ essential message, by investigating the social dynamics suggested by these root metaphors using metaphor theory and social scientific methods. Patronage is studied within contemporary Roman and Mediterranean aristocratic patriarchal society, forming an a-typical broad-based needle-like power pyramid with multiple similarly structured power pyramids within, based on a morality of indebtedness, honour and power. Jesus accepted God as his father and declared the advent of God’s patronage as king (kingdom of God) and father of the faithful (children of God). Within the kingdom and household of God, there was no hierarchy, except for the primate of the first born son, whom Jesus symbolises as broker for God’s patronage to all his followers. Within the faith communities there should be no hierarchy or any form of clientage other than God’s patronage. Rather, the faithful are equal and should serve each other and their communities with compassion, responsibility and justice.Contribution: The contribution of this research is its focus on similarity and dissimilarity of these patronage metaphors and their application to subvert the power dynamics of patronage and patriarchy within the community of the faithful, in order to proffer God’s patronage of a society of caring, selfless equals today. This research falls within the scope of HTS Theological studies, as it is a multi-disciplinary study of key biblical metaphors investigated with accepted methodology resulting in valid conclusions which are ethically sound. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. UmbelDallas J. GinglesBonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. Umbel grand rapids, mi: baker academic, 2013. 272 pp. $29.99In their new book Bonhoeffer the Assassin?, Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. (...) Umbel painstakingly reread primary texts in order to challenge the widely held belief that Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Their alternative to the usual narrative of Bonhoeffer’s life holds that early in his career, long before the crisis of the Confessing Church and the rise of Nazism, Bonhoeffer made a commitment to [End Page 205] Christian pacifism that endured even through the war years and his resistance to Hitler.To argue for this alternative telling, the authors analyze Bonhoeffer’s three main “ethical” texts: the early “Barcelona lectures,” Discipleship, and finally Ethics. On their telling, while the early ethics lectures were theologically deficient, by the time that Bonhoeffer wrote Discipleship he had developed “integration,” which was “the primary theological catalyst for the ethical transition from Barcelona to Discipleship” (129). Discipleship is, they conclude, the pinnacle of Bonhoeffer’s thought, and anything that comes after it, including Ethics, cannot in any fundamental way differ from it.Alongside this diachronic analysis of Bonhoeffer’s main ethics texts, the authors emphasize two letters that Bonhoeffer wrote in 1935 and 1936. In the first, Bonhoeffer asserts that, because of his theology, he is “sometimes perceived as fanatical” (223). The second he wrote describing his “conversion experience” in 1930, in relation to the Sermon on the Mount and “Christian pacifism.” Read singly, these letters are interesting examples of Bonhoeffer’s thought and life of faith. As the authors present the argument, though, the letters comprise a unified narrative and function as an interpretive lens by which the primary texts should be understood. They think that the “fanaticism” of the first letter refers to the faith brought about in the conversion experience described in the second. The “fanaticism” letter is important because in it he asserts that, “if he were to become more ‘reasonable,’ he would have to ‘chuck [his] entire theology’” (223).Because Bonhoeffer wrote that he would have to “chuck” his theology if he made it more “reasonable,” the authors think that the theology that emerged from the conversion experience has a foundational role in his later works. Whatever Bonhoeffer wrote in Ethics, then, simply cannot disagree with the “fanaticism” that “is most fully articulated in … Discipleship” (223). Because of the importance of the “Christian pacifism” of the conversion and Discipleship, it is thus impossible—or at least highly unlikely—that Bonhoeffer participated in the assassination attempts.Bonhoeffer scholars and nonspecialists alike will find this text provocative and interesting. The conclusions, though, are finally unconvincing. For the authors, the “conversion experience” is the central key to understanding Bonhoeffer, and it is clear that they understand “Christian pacifism” to be of primary importance in the conversion, but they never tell us to what variety of Christian pacifism Bonhoeffer converted. It is very likely that Bonhoeffer’s Christian pacifism was different in kind than the Christian pacifism that the authors seem to endorse. That anachronistic reading alone renders the conclusions of the text suspect.Apart from simple historical questions, the methodology the authors use to construct their hermeneutical lens is also problematic. It is difficult to submit [End Page 206] Bonhoeffer’s entire corpus to two earlier letters that he wrote a full year apart. While readers may understand and agree that Bonhoeffer was not, in reality, an assassin (the minor claim), it will be hard to convince readers of the impassibility of his “Christian pacifism” (the major claim).Dallas J. GinglesSouthern Methodist UniversityCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ernst Cassirer, Historian of the WillDavid A. Wisner‘Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper, which must form a Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, ‘tis not a Head merely, but a Heart and a Resolution which must compleate the real Philosopher. 1In order to possess the world of culture we must incessantly reconquer it by historical recollection. But recollection does not mean merely the act of reproduction. It (...) is a new intellectual synthesis—a constructive act.... History is not knowledge of external facts or events; it is a form... an organon of our self-knowledge, an indispensable instrument for building up our human universe. 2Ernst Cassirer is probably best known to historians of ideas for his work on the problem of knowledge, which began with a neo-Kantian historical analysis of epistemological questions and culminated in the philosophy of symbolic forms. As he himself always admitted, even in his last public writings, this focus on epistemology was the foundation of his philosophical interests. Yet by the last two decades of his life he had in true Socratic fashion endowed his investigations with heightened emphasis. “That self-knowledge is the highest aim of philosophical inquiry,” he wrote in the opening lines of An Essay on Man, “appears to be generally acknowledged.” 3 Cassirer perceived, however, [End Page 145] that the need for such an effort to be made had reached monumentally critical proportions: the early twentieth century had engendered grave historical and philosophical crises which threatened to reverse the progress of modern thought. Paradoxically, modern philosophy had many tools for attaining “knowledge of human nature” and yet stood farther from its goal than ever before. What Cassirer called “anthropological philosophy,” concerned as it was “with the whole destiny of man,” still required special consideration, in both its theoretical and its historical dimensions. 4 It was essentially to these twin domains that Cassirer would devote himself in his later years.The transformation of Cassirer’s philosophical perspectives thus had two facets. In order to outline his program Cassirer had first to consider a broader range of human activities than thought alone, from which he concluded that human culture consisted of a hierarchy of symbolic forms beginning with myth and culminating in science. However, he also felt compelled to elucidate the historical process by which these symbolic forms could progressively manifest themselves, and more specifically the individual human effort which was required for true self-knowledge. This he did principally in his historical works of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and with particularly profound results: from a historian of knowledge Cassirer became a historian of the will; from an epistemologist he became an ethical thinker; from an academic he became an exemplar of self-conscious moral action, a paragon of human autonomy and freedom. Indeed, in this endeavor he proved to be more thoroughly and fundamentally a Kantian than ever his theory of knowledge would reveal.I would go so far as to suggest that Cassirer’s history of the will was an integral part of his mature constructive philosophy. On the surface this history can be restated in the following terms. First, Cassirer insists on a fundamental opposition between the rationalism and intellectualism of ancient Greek philosophy and the voluntarism of the Judeo-Christian tradition, both of which represent in Cassirer’s view manifestations of a struggle in Western thought continuing well into the twentieth century. Second, he suggests that the historical task of Western philosophy since the first mature articulation of Latin Christian theology by Saint Augustine has been to liberate the individual human will from any and all forms of subservience. Such views are most forcefully expressed in The Myth of the State, Cassirer’s last book, but they actually constitute an essential and coherent element in all of Cassirer’s later work on the history of ideas and culture. Indeed, Cassirer’s history of the will provides us with a particularly keen and nuanced account of this essential Western legacy, while at the same time reading into it in Kantian manner a moral for the life of the individual human being. [End Page 146]In making such claims I am situating myself among... (shrink)

In his earlier work Robert Bellah coined the concept of ‘civil religion’ for that ‘unique American combination of secularization, individualism and pluralism’. Such a civil religion is supposed to work as an integrative factor on the level of societies and as a motivational factor on the level of individuals. At both levels, it supplies the meaning of meaning, a meaningful ‘ultimate reality’ which draws people together and delivers them with a personal idea of vocation or ‘calling’.Unfortunately, as Bellah and his (...) research team state in books such as Habits of the Heart and The Good Society, this balanced normative pattern is waning. Societal self-descriptions in the U.S. are confined to a vocabulary of ‘Lockean individualism’. They are no longer balanced by biblical and republican traditions, which provided ‘the language needed to make moral sense of one’s life’. At the same time, however these field studies observed that many urged “for a renewal of commitment and community.” Bellah and his research team conclude: “such a renewal is indeed a world waiting to be born if we only had the courage to see it.” Because of the erosion of the shared symbolic system that provided some ‘ultimate social meaning’, Bellah conceives society to be disintegrating. Group solidarity cannot be mobilized any more, individuals feel atomized and lack trust and belief. Well-versed in the Durkheimian tradition, Bellah can only observe society in terms of normative integration. If shared values and beliefs are being hollowed out, social order can only be plunged into a crisis.The following analysis will not proceed along this Durkheimian path. We see no compelling reason to conceive of society in terms of normative integration alone. Instead we plug into the vocabulary of Luhmann’s systems theory and observe society as synonymous with all ongoing communications. Society only consists of communications and nothing else. This implies for example that human beings do not belong to society, . For psychic systems can only process thoughts, feelings, desires, but no communications! (shrink)

There is an evident lack of rigorous frameworks for making sense of the role and status of spirituality and religion in organizations and organizing, in particular from the perspective of spiritual philosophies of the social. This paper suggests that the philosophy of Plato and his modern follower, political theorist Eric Voegelin could offer a viable perspective for understanding organizational spirituality in its metaphysical, political and ethical contexts. Essential for such a philosophical reflection is the postulation of the transcendental realm as (...) the ultimate reality that provides the fullest templates for order, knowledge and ethicality. It is argued, in the footsteps of Voegelin, that modern organizations and modern organization theory should seek to re-awaken the lost experiences of the divine Beyond by re-animating religious symbols and myths of transcendence as devices for a spiritually opened consciousness. (shrink)

The articles published in this issue of Ethical Perspectives all relate to the social and political consequences of phenomena such as uncertainty and anxiety. The biennial Multatuli Lecture, held in Leuven on May 12th, 2001, addressed this very theme. In her paper, “Anxiety and Uncertainty in Modern Society”, Mary Douglas, one of the keynote speakers at the conference, puts forward the view that certainty is only possible when uncertainty is held in check by some kind of institution. Citing examples from (...) her vast experience of various cultural systems, she argues that the loss of certainty in contemporary society, lamented by many, should hardly come as a surprise. Modern demography, technology and forms of labour have contributed to the decline of many traditional institutions, and increased the flexibility and open-endedness of our experience. Douglas realizes that a return to traditional forms of community, and hence greater certainty, is a chimera. She argues that we should rather examine our desire for greater certainty, and prepare ourselves to live with uncertainty, without regrets.In “Habit and History”, Robert Bellah recalls the distinction between elaborated and restricted speech codes — described by Mary Douglas in her book Natural Symbols — and employs it to interpret the contemporary tension between individual autonomy and social solidarity. For Bellah, the history of modernity is an account of the ever increasing dominance of personal freedom, elaborated speech codes and a critical spirit at the expense of ritual practices, loyalty to social institutions and the sense of community. He suggests that we will only succeed in building livable futures once we have given up the illusion of autonomy as something absolute. Instead of viewing elaborated code and restricted code as mutually exclusive, Bellah wishes to explore the possible complementarities between the two, while acknowledging that only the restricted code gives meaning to our lives.Any wish to eradicate the causes of anxiety takes it for granted that a society released from the throes of anxiety would be a desirable one. In his article, “Whistling in the Dark”, Rudi Visker questions this assumption, drawing on a tradition of thought that seeks to emphasize anxiety's revelatory function: anxiety, as Mary Douglas also pointed out, can teach us a valuable lesson about our situation, about the limitations human lives are subject to. Rather than a condition that is produced by identifiable causes, anxiety should be considered as something that is there from the start, and society's task would then be to give this ineradicable anxiety an acceptable outlet or structure.Many critics of modernity posit a close relationship between the decline of traditional meaning systems and the increasing discontent among certain groups within society. Recently, more empirical research is being carried out in order to ascertain whether such a relationship indeed exists. In their paper, “The Malaise of Limitlessness”, Mark Elchardus and Jessy Siongers present the results of an investigation into the influence of de-traditionalization on various indicators of social discontent and social well-being, among young people of secondary-school age in Belgium. Although the concept of a tradition, thus also `de-traditionalization', is notoriously difficult to pin down, Elchardus and Siongers find evidence to support the view that the modernization process, with its increased individual choice and greater self-reflection, has led to the loss of meaningful reference points, and that this, in turn, is associated with uncertainty and malaise. Interestingly, there is also evidence of a correlation between social malaise and various attitudes such as intolerance, authoritarianism and anti-democratic feelings.While the previous contributions hint at what might be called an ethical form of sublimation, where anxiety is contained and directed towards acceptable objectives, Duston Moore's article, “Revolutionary Eros”, raises the prospect of an explicitly political form of sublimation. In this wide-ranging commentary on Marcuse's masterwork, Eros and Civilization, Moore works out the far-reaching political and economic consequences of what at first sight would seem to be a matter for private individuals: desire and its repression by nature and culture . For Marcuse, the performance principle is only one among an entire field of alternate possibilities for directing surplus-repression. The full critical force of Marcuse's argument lies in the suggestion that there may be other ways, that surplus-repression might be transformed, thus leading to new kinds of social relations and new, as yet unimagined forms of labour. (shrink)

A distinguished cross-cultural researcher presents a brave, heartfelt and exciting challenge to the social sciences: the creation of an international, moral order. He advocates the use of cross-cultural research to uncover a common core of values and morality. This research would then be used to ameliorate problems and guide policy in the light of those values. He shows his procedures at work in the study of ten major social and personal ills, such as mental illness, divorce, sex roles, and (...) child abuse. His research leads him inexorably to the concept of the moralnet -- the social group that provides values and support. When these are disrupted, problems are aggravated or even created. 'The work of Naroll fits in well with. (shrink)

My paper was commissioned by Journal of Philosophy to provide a piece adequately explaining the significance of the Lacanian Mirror stage within Lacan's larger work. -/- I focus on the transition from the mirror stage to the incorporation of the subject into the symbolic order. I argue that the mirror stage is transitional and that its significance lies in what of it is incorporated into and transformed within the more complex structures of the subject and the unconscious. -/- (...) Implicit in my claim is that "lacanian" theories which hypostatize the mirror stage into a determinate structure of adult consciousness are misinterpreting Lacan. I use Seminars 1 and 2 to make fuller sense the mirror stage as presented in his Ecrits. (shrink)

Levinas's ethics has in the last decades exerted a significant influence on Nursing and Caring Science. The core of Levinas's ethics – his analyses of how our subjectivity is established in the ethical encounter with our neighbour or the Other – is applied both to healthcare practice and in the project of building an identity of Nursing and Caring Science. Levinas's analyses are highly abstract and metaphysical, and also non‐normative. Thus, his analyses cannot be applied directly to practical (...) problems and questions. Theorists in Nursing and Caring Science are generally aware of this. Nevertheless, many of them use Levinas's analyses to explore and solve questions of practical and normative character. This article focuses on the challenges and dilemmas of using Levinas in this manner.The article is divided into two parts. The first part presents some central ideas of Levinas's ethics based on the latter part of his authorship. The main focus is on the radicalism of Levinas's critique of the symbolic order (which includes concepts, categories, knowledge, etc.) – or as he puts it ‘the said’ – as a basis for subjectivity and responsibility. Levinas's notions of saying, anarchy, and singularity accentuate this point of view. These notions refer to conditions in the language, which counteract the symbolic order in the ethical encounter to such an extent that it becomes an incomprehensible. Levinas gives the argumentation a metaphysical frame: The encounter with the incomprehensible is an encounter with the Holy, which is not the ontological God, but a metaphysical desire. It is a mystery as to what this means, and herein lies possibly the main challenge when using Levinas's ethics in science and research: How to maintain the radicalism of his critique of the symbolic order when this is to be communicated in a scientific context that expects clarification of statements and ideas? The second part of the article explores this question by examining how some theorists use Levinas's ethics on questions and problems in the area of healthcare and Nursing and Caring Science. The focus is especially on the theorists' reception and use of the just mentioned notions. The study reveals that these theorists to a large extent transform Levinas's ethics according to their own approaches, with the result that his ethics loses its critical radicalism. Thus, I question the reason why they use Levinas. (shrink)

With A Theory of General Ethics Warwick Fox both defines the field of General Ethics and offers the first example of a truly general ethics. Specifically, he develops a single, integrated approach to ethics that encompasses the realms of interhuman ethics, the ethics of the natural environment, and the ethics of the built environment. Thus Fox offers what is in effect the first example of an ethical "Theory of Everything."Fox refers to his own (...) approach to General Ethics as the "theory of responsive cohesion." He argues that the best examples in any domain of interest--from psychology to politics, from conversations to theories--exemplify the quality of responsive cohesion, that is, they hold together by virtue of the mutual responsiveness of the elements that constitute them. Fox argues that the relational quality of responsive cohesion represents the most fundamental value there is. He then develops the theory of responsive cohesion, central features of which include the elaboration of a "theory of contexts" as well as a differentiated model of our obligations in respect of all beings. In doing this, he draws on cutting-edge work in cognitive science in order to develop a powerful distinction between beings who use language and beings that do not.Fox tests his theory against eighteen central problems in General Ethics--including challenges raised by abortion, euthanasia, personal obligations, politics, animal welfare, invasive species, ecological management, architecture, and planning--and shows that it offers sensible and defensible answers to the widest possible range of ethical problems. (shrink)

The creation of the state of Israel was the outcome of the Zionist movement, which originated in Europe and was itself inspired by fundamental European ideas—Enlightenment, national self-determination, democracy and socialism. From its earliest days Zionism was primarily a secular movement that rejected the religious establishment and religious way of life of the Jews in the Diaspora. In many respects, however, the founders of the state and the principles on which they founded its institutions—the political, judicial, economic, social, and educational—were (...) rooted in the ethical values and cultural practices of the Jewish tradition which they had apparently rejected. To explain this complex process of secularization of a very ancient religious and cultural tradition—which many see as an unresolved or unresolvable conflict between two opposing systems of thought—I draw on the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer and especially on his Truth and Method (1960). Culture, according to Gadamer, is a continuous flow of tradition within what he called “the horizon.” People, he argued, create and live within a given cultural tradition, but they are at the same time its interpreters, enlarging it by adopting elements from various cultures and ideologies, or “horizons.” From this hermeneutic perspective, the founders of modern Israel and their successors were the active interpreters of the Jewish tradition within the larger historical context of the European Enlightenment. I illustrate this process of cultural interpretation by focusing on the secularization of the Jewish holidays, specifically on the way the Kibbutz movement, a leading symbol of the new Israel, re-interpretated Jewish holidays like Passover, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Yom Kippur, and gave these religious festivals a secular-Israeli content. However, this dynamic pioneering stage of secularization may be said to have ended by the 1980s. From then on, the secular identity of Israeli society has been undergoing a variety of radical changes. (shrink)

The moral and political philosophy of Wilhelm Röpke is among the finest instances of European classical liberalism in the twentieth century, and in many occasions he stated that only a society which understands the importance of markets can be reconciled with human dignity. Röpke elaborated a political theory that focused on the harmony between moral principles and economic law. In this sense, his liberalism is unique not only because it defends private property and competition as pillars of a thriving economy, (...) but above all that it provides the preconditions of a society that can remain secure from the immorality of despotism and subsequent ethical degeneration. To that end he upheld an economic order based on voluntary cooperation as the basis for a more humane society, emphasizing the role of institutional competition and federalism. Röpke’s cultural conservatism should not therefore be misunderstood, as it is very much connected with his defense of the essential role of property. It is only in this sense that he found in liberal humanism a third way, which is not however situated halfway between the market and socialism, but which represents instead a defense of a competitive society that is aware of its own historical and cultural basis. (shrink)

This study aims to determine the opinions of teachers of Religious Culture and Ethics Course (DKAB) about subject-based classroom application in-depth. The research has been carried from qualitative research methods with a case study design. In order to determine the working group of the study, criteria sampling was used in the first stage, and the maximum diversity sampling method was used in the next step. The sample of this research consists of 8 DKAB teachers working in Ankara province. (...) A semi-structured interview form has been used as a data collection tool in the study. The data of the qualitative of this research has been analyzed with both descriptive and content analysis by NVivo 10 program. In order to ensure validity and reliability in the study, credibility, transferability, consistency, and verifiability strategies have been used. When the research data were analyzed, four themes were formed: positive opinions about the application, negative opinions and problems related to the application, contribution of the practice to religious education and training, and recommendations about the application. DKAB teachers find the application more positive than the classroom system. It has been found that the practice of subject-based classrooms is a motivational tool for Primary School students, while it causes some problems for lower secondary school and upper secondary school students.Summary: Learning environments are among the key elements in the acquisition of 21st-century skills. Classrooms are also a part of the learning environment. Classes are the learning environment in which teachers and students spend most of their education and training process. In this context, subject-based classroom application is one of the preferred methods in the arrangement of classrooms.Subject-based classroom application means that the teachers have a special classroom related to their branches in the school building, and students attend the teacher's classroom according to the syllabus. In this practice, the teacher can decorate walls, floor, ceiling, column, and beam of the classroom with students’ study materials such as banner, poster, painting, cartoon to make the course more effective and efficient and to create a psychological atmosphere called classroom atmosphere-air.This application aims to activate the student by enriching the classroom and make learning effective and efficient. The classroom equipped with appropriate equipment and materials provides a favorable environment for the implementation of effective teaching strategies. The application can create “class/classroom culture” by using ordinary meanings and symbols related to the course. It provides students the opportunity to exhibit their products and contributes to students' self-regulation skills development. Besides, real-life practices or practices close to reality can be brought into the classroom. As a result, permanent learning can be realized with the possibility of creating a shared living space and the number of sensory organs participating in learning.This current study aims to address in-depth information about the opinions of Religious Culture and Moral Ethics (DKAB) teachers in primary, secondary, and high schools regarding the subject-based classroom application. When the studies in the literature are examined, it is seen that the studies related to the subject-based classroom application have increased since 2010. However, it is clear that this research is directed towards social studies, geography, science, and mathematics courses and is based on the opinions of students, teachers, and administrators at the secondary school level. In the context of DKAB course, there has been no research including the views of teachers, students, or school administrators regarding the application of subject-based classrooms. This study is carried out revealing perspectives of DKAB teachers by examining their opinions on the subject-based classroom application and contribute to the field. The research was conducted with a case study design from the qualitative research methods. The participants consist of 8 DKAB teachers working in Ankara province. A mixed purposive sampling method was used to determine the study group. In the first stage, the teachers implementing the DKAB classrooms application were taken as criteria. In the next step, the study group was determined within the framework of the maximum diversity sampling method by considering the variables such as school level, gender, age, education level, duration of teachers' work. The data were collected through a semi-structured interview form with expert opinion. In the form, there are nine main questions and probe questions, which include questions related to subject-based classrooms application, the contribution of the application to religious education and training, the contribution of teachers to professional and personal development, the effect of teachers' belonging to the school, the effectiveness, and improvement of the application. Permission has been obtained from the Ankara Provincial Directorate of National Education and participants via consent form for the interview. The interviews were recorded in audio, 169.58-minute audio recording transcripts, and 52-page interview data obtained. The qualitative data of this research has been analyzed with both descriptive and content analysis by NVivo 10 program. In order to ensure validity and reliability in the study, credibility, transferability, consistency, and verifiability strategies have been used.When the data of the research were analyzed, the opinions of DKAB teachers about the subject-based classrooms application categorized under four themes; positive and negative opinions/problems about the practice, the contribution of the practice to religious education and teaching and practical suggestions. Under the theme of positive opinions on the application, positive aspects for the teacher, student, parents, and comparison with the classroom system were formed. According to the participants, the practice of DKAB classroom is a “facilitation” element for the teacher because of the factors such as the teacher not moving around the classroom, not carrying material, having freedom to organize the classroom, and material regularity. In this application, since the teacher has a class of his own, the teacher adopts and owns the classroom and the sense of belonging to school increases. This sense of belonging is felt so strongly that there is even a participant who plans to retire if the application is abandoned. The positive aspects of the application for the students are that; a classroom is a motivating tool, the boards and walls can be used, and the student has the opportunity to exhibit their activities. When compared with the classroom system, it was stated that as a result of the branch classroom practice, the school equipment could be better protected, class order and cleaning easier, and the success of the students would be increased.The negative views of the participants on the application were grouped under the categories of students, teachers, and parents. Not having a fixed class of their own, continually relocating and losing time in recess, staying in the classroom door when the classroom is locked, not adopting the classroom and lack of lockers constitute the negative aspects of the application for the students. The overuse of classrooms, less use of teachers' rooms, lack of communication between colleagues are the negative aspects of the application for the teachers. It was stated by (75%) most of the participants that branch classroom application contributed to the continual learning of students in religious education and teaching. To make the application more functional, DKAB teachers have proposed arrangements such as improving physical infrastructure, enriching teaching materials, and arranging school syllabus and keeping classrooms open. As a result, teachers find the application more positive than the classroom system. While it is a motivation tool for primary school students, it causes some problems for secondary and high school students, such as carrying bags, staying at the door, and wasting time. In this sense, the application is recommended to be applied in primary schools that have a sufficient number of classrooms. Also, the system should be applied in secondary and high schools where the number of students is low, or the number of classrooms is sufficiently provided that the problems experienced by the students are eliminated. School administrations and teachers need to take necessary measures to make the application effective and efficient. (shrink)

To Serve With Honor should be required reading for all members of the officer corps of the United States military. Beyond that, it should be made required reading for all United States military academies, ROTC and officer candidate programs. This treatise on military ethics goes a long way in bridging the gap between the military and society's understanding of the military's ethical dilemma. It is a must for the student of military affairs. International Social Science Review To Serve With (...) Honor is the first book by an American to focus on the validity of current standards of military ethics in more than a century. This thoughtful study begins with the premise that the military profession is qualitatively different from any other profession. Author Richard Gabriel uses this assumption to address such vital questions as What are the limits of military obedience? and When does a soldier have an obligation to resist the orders of his superiors? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:508 BOOK REVIEWS Margerie tells us that Augustine surely held that Genesis contains such a plural sense, with the added affirmation that Moses, whom Augustine considers to be the author ofthe Pentateuch, thanks to a transient beatific vision, personally foresaw and intended all the interpretations that would later be given. In keeping with his careful and cautious approach, near the end of the book Father de Margerie admits the (...) limitations of Augustine, limitations which Augustine himself often perceived. "First, Augustine's strictly exegetical works are rather limited.... His sustained commentaries are few, those which have reached us concern Genesis, Job, the Letters to the Galatians and part of that to the Romans, the Gospel, and the First Letter of John" (126). Secondly, Augustine had only a slight knowledge of Biblical Greek. He usually worked from the Latin Bible. He seldom referred systematically to the Greek. Further, he had "but a smattering of Hebrew, acquired indirectly through his familiarity with Punic" (126). Finally-a very large admission- "he, along with nearly all the Fathers, failed to analyze adequately the literal meaning of numerous texts he sought to interpret" (126). In spite of such limitations, Augustine and the other Fathers do provide us with many insights into sound doctrine. This is especially useful since so many of the errors of today, advertised as new, are merely ancient mistakes rejected centuries ago by the Fathers. Therefore we are all indebted to Father de Margerie for helping to call us back to what is so very good in the Fathers. Father de Margerie has rendered a singular service to scholarship in his first two volumes of study of Patristic exegesis. The present volume, the third, is a worthy successor to the first two. Notre Dame Institute Alexandria, Virginia WILLIAM G. MOST The Primacy of Love: An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas. By PAUL J. WADELL, C.P. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1992. Pp. 162. $11.95. Friends of God: Virtues and Gifts in Aquinas. By PAUL J. WADELL, C.P. American University Studies, Series VII: Theology and Religion, vol. 76. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. Pp. x + 148. Drawing from the virtue-ethics orientation of his earlier work, Friendship and the Moral Life (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), Paul Wadell has written two books that seek to accomplish two distinctly different BOOK REVIEWS 509 objectives: to produce a work that can serve as a general introduction to Thomas Aquinas's teaching about ethics, and to produce a monograph that urges a different approach to the interpretation of Thomas's ethical teaching. But both books share a common interest of Wadell's: showing that Thomas's ethics is an ethics of genuine affection. Whether he is judged to have reached the two objectives is a question that is likely to be answered differently by moralists, depending upon the issues and approaches that shape their own understanding of Thomistic moral theology. At the very least, Wadell has produced two well-crafted books that are trend-setting works in a long and promising career, works whose approach is surely to become familiar as more and more writers emphasize virtue ethics with regard to the moral teaching of Aquinas. And at most, Wadell has shown himself to be both a fine teacher of Thomas's ethical thought and an incisive scholar in identifying the subterranean movements of the Common Doctor's thought. I shall consider The Primacy ofLove first, which, although it appeared second, is a good intelligible backdrop for presenting the more sophisticated and important argument of Friends ofGod. Waddell's introduction to Thomas's ethics is not really a synopsis of the Secunda pars of the Summa theologiae, though the lion's share of the material he employs is from there, and in something of its original order. It is rather a sympathetic, almost affectionate, portrait of Thomas's ethical teaching. The book does not introduce the reader to the technicalities of Thomas's thought, or to the bewildering debates surrounding the practical syllogism and natural law that have characterized the secondary literature in the second half of this century. Wadell-and others, I imagine-would consider this a strength... (shrink)

In the last hundred years, the philosophy of natural law has suffered a fate that could hardly have been envisaged by the seventeenth and eighteenth century exponents of its universality and eternity: it has become old-fashioned. The positivists and the Marxists were happy to throw eternal moral ity out of the window, confident that some magic temporal harmony would eventually follow Progress in by the front door. Their hopes may not have been fully realized, but they did succeed in discrediting (...) natural law. What is often not appreciated is the extent to which we have adopted the tenets of the philosophy they despised, borh in the field of politics, and in the field of personal and social ethics, which Barbeyrac called "la science des mreurs" and which the positivists re christened "social science". Consequently, though we live in a world whose freedom, such as it is, is largely a result of the popularization of the philosophy of natural law, and whose conscious and unconscious standards, such as they are, are a result of that philosophy as it became combined with Christianity, the doctrine of natural law is itself for gotten. In view of the oblivion into which it has fallen, natural law is a concept which means little to the average reader. All too often, Montesquieu scholars have traded on this oblivion in order to give an exaggerated picture of his originality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Ethics of Justice in a Cross-Cultural ContextMichael von BrückThe central thesis of this paper is, primarily, that justice is neither a qualification of actions nor a political expediency, but is an existential reality. This reality is symbolized in different ways depending on religious experience and cultural conditioning. Underlying all concepts and ethics of justice is a dimension of basic insight that is beyond rational quantifying analysis.The (...) semantics of concepts of justice is different in various contexts and meaning systems, that is, in more general political and social contexts and in the rational discourse of philosophy. The general political term for justice is more confusing than helpful for a clear conceptualization; it might be treated more as a symbol in a mythological framework than a concept. In this context justice is defined in terms of what it is not, or metaphorically in differing categories, for example, justice as impartiality, equality. Thus, many programmatic formulae, such as "International Movement for a Just World,"1 express a utopia against the frustration with regard to social, economic, and political conditions and call for action to establish a "just world" without defining what the standard of this action must be in order to qualify as just and what exactly the notion of a "just world" actually might mean conceptually. Certain political actions are condemned from a particular standpoint, but the very foundation of any standpoint remains controversial. "Just" or "unjust" are actions that are determined according to the two standards of an Aristotelian suum cuique and the principle of treating equal cases in equal ways. Here, actions and their results as well as human freedom of action and the respective responsibility are a matter of debate. The problem is how to establish criteria for what is regarded as being "equal."2I suggest that justice can be discussed in two ways: (1) as an agreement or result of negotiation and better insight that is worked out between partners in social processes, and/or (2) as a reflection of the cosmic order, the divine will, or any pre-established harmony that is not negotiable by human beings. Whereas the first assumption is reflected in the theories of Aristotle, Rousseau, John Rawls,3 and others, the second one seems to be one of the basic contents of any religious worldview. Rawls actually constructs his idea of justice as fairness in the line of the familiar theory [End Page 61] of the social contract, following Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Accordingly, justice is the basic assumption that generates the condition for any further discourse in societies. It is an "original position," an "initial status," the "symmetry of everyone's relations to each other," which, of course, is neither an actual state of historical affairs nor a primitive condition of culture, but a purely hypothetical situation.4 For Rawls, to think justice requires the task to acknowledge interdependencies and mutual dependence of the different factors and actors in societies on the basis of reflexive reason. In religions, however, it is the dharma, the commandment of God, the Tao, or the cosmic harmony or "symmetry" of forces that is the root cause for justice in human relations.In this essay I will not argue any of these positions mentioned above as such but maintain only that any particular discourse depends on communication processes, that is, language and actors. Actors have interests that are mediated through claims. These claims may be compatible or not. However, in both cases they are part of the communication processes itself. And it is in communication that discourses materialize. Therefore, dialogue is the framework for any theory of justice, which may be inclined more to the first or the second position outlined above. Because today, due to economic, political, and cultural circumstances, all discourses are linked to each other, it is in cross-cultural communication and dialogue that a theory of justice has to be worked out. The question is whether justice should be regarded as a precondition for dialogue or a wanted result of dialogue. The hypothesis I want to argue for is that justice is neither only a precondition nor only a result, but that it is the very... (shrink)

Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature is intended to offer a broad panorama on Leibniz’s philosophy. Although necessarily selective in its focus, it aspires to a comprehensive understanding of how the different parts of Leibniz’s philosophy — theodicy, ethics, metaphysics, natural philosophy — fit together in a coherent and compelling fashion. In the book, I indicate some of the places where tensions threaten the unity of this scheme. My primary goal, however, is to reconstruct a system that (...) would be recognizable to Leibniz himself. Within this system, primacy is assigned to the doctrine of theodicy. Although many topics vied for Leibniz’s philosophical attention, none was more firmly embedded in his consciousness than the problem of comprehending the existence and nature of the world in a way consistent with its creation by a supremely wise and good God. One of the central theses of the book is that it is only against the background of this project that we can properly understand the details of Leibniz’s complex metaphysics. (shrink)

Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature is intended to offer a broad panorama on Leibniz’s philosophy. Although necessarily selective in its focus, it aspires to a comprehensive understanding of how the different parts of Leibniz’s philosophy — theodicy, ethics, metaphysics, natural philosophy — fit together in a coherent and compelling fashion. In the book, I indicate some of the places where tensions threaten the unity of this scheme. My primary goal, however, is to reconstruct a system that (...) would be recognizable to Leibniz himself. Within this system, primacy is assigned to the doctrine of theodicy. Although many topics vied for Leibniz’s philosophical attention, none was more firmly embedded in his consciousness than the problem of comprehending the existence and nature of the world in a way consistent with its creation by a supremely wise and good God. One of the central theses of the book is that it is only against the background of this project that we can properly understand the details of Leibniz’s complex metaphysics. (shrink)

This study points out the importance and meaning of apologizing as a moral value in compensating the imperfections committed by individuals in social relations and correcting the deteriorating relationships. Accepting that every person can make mistakes is the most essential element that paves the way for the emergence of apology as a virtue. It teaches one to accept that he/she may be wrong, not to consider himself superior to anyone, and arouses the will and will not to make such mistakes. (...) Apology tells the necessity to be respectful and to value other people as well as to be honest. Apologizing is like forcing a person to be honest, and it tells you about the need to care about other people and to be respectful. It is seen that different kinds of apologies are made according to the culpable, guilty person, the environment, the victim, and the situation of the defect. This study discusses the meaning of the words used in apologizing whether they mean full apology or not, the meaning of the apology, its moral dimension, and its relationship with repentance. It also discusses the reasons for the apology, apologizing strategies, accountability, assuming responsibility, proposing repairs, and making promises on not doing something wrong again. The similarity of repentance in religious traditions with apologizing was emphasized, and the relationship between forgiveness and apology was evaluated in terms of the attitudes that the parties should adopt. Finally, as a rule of value and courtesy, suggestions were made on how to provide apologies education in the family.Summary: This study draw attention to the meaning and importance of apologizing as a moral value in compensating for the imperfections that individuals have committed against each other in social relations and in correcting broken relationships. Acknowledging that every person can make mistakes is the most important element that paves the way for the emergence of an apology as a virtue. Accepting that one can be wrong teaches that one should not think of himself as superior to anyone and arouses the will and desire not to make such mistakes. Apologizing leads people to be honest and tells them about the need to care about other people and be respectful.Apologizing is admitting that the rhetoric, actions, and practices that lead to apologies are not fair, accurate, and legitimate. First, apologizing means that the person to whom we made a mistake is a human being. It means that accepting anyone can make a mistake, and we can be wrong. It gives this person the understanding that s/he should not be superior to anyone else. It also arouses a desire and will not make such mistakes anymore. Apologizing tells you the necessity of caring and respecting other people as well as forcing people to be honest. The person who apologizes to him is undoubtedly respectable. The respected person will surely appreciate to others. The basis of social order and life is mutual respect. Being able to apologize draws the individual's point of view to the end where he or she should be and provides the basis for the healthy functioning of the social order by gaining the understanding of respect for other people. Also, being able to apologize is an expression of confession, honesty, and sincerity. Apologizing in this respect is a virtue and merit. The society that values are lost and surrounded by selfishness and nihilism must be turned into virtues, and people who know the value of human beings.The good and virtuous person is not without fault, s/he is the one who apologizes for the mistakes, s/he has committed or seeks ways to redeem that mistake, s/he is the one who returns from his/her mistake. Apologizing should be not only a responsibility but also an indicator of self-confidence. It should not be forgotten that conscientious accounting is a self-judgment. S/he can quickly apologize for stepping on someone else's feet, soiling his clothes, but s/he does not think of a full apology consisting of remorse, compensation, and repair for the person who has taken away a person's right, poisoned his life and tarnished his future.When the parent says that the child should apologize, a process will be initiated for the child to consider. If the child apologizes in front of his or her parent, who points to the necessity of this, it is an important step in the child's moral education, and this indicates that the child internalizes these norms and engages in independent moral accounting. Because s/he now realizes that a value s/he defends without dictating from the outside has been violated, and therefore, has the motivation to make an apology.Arrogance is the biggest obstacle to apologizing. In men-women relations, it can be seen that women are more easily able to apologize, they do not consider apologizing as an indicator of as powerlessness and insulted as men. A manager, a boss, a leader, or a president can delay or fail to realize that his/her authority and dignity will diminish when s/he apologizes to his/her subordinate and those under his/her command. Men in the family, teachers at school, managers in the institution, boss and so on leader and authority persons refrain from apologizing by going to show and bless what they say and do to legitimize the past, to forget or reject mistakes, to prevent them from being questioned morally. This tells us the importance of internalizing the understanding of apologetics as a social culture starting with the family.Individual mistakes should be apologized for in daily life, institutional errors, as well as for some unfortunate incidents. Apologies have the potential for establishing a suitable basis for the establishment of a culture of dialogue in inter-communal relations and sharing some common values and interests. Apologies can contribute significantly to the development of a culture of tolerance, cooperation, and peaceful coexistence among communities.When a defect requiring a committed apology, the event must be evaluated not only from a unilateral perspective, but from a whole context and sides so that the perpetrator can adopt the feelings and understanding of the victim.In the apology, there should be a strategy such as an expression of regret, accountability, taking responsibility, offering repairs, and making promises on not happening again. Repentance in religious traditions is similar to an apology. In the face of apology, the victim reduces negative feelings towards the offender by forgiving and repairs the relationship. Apologies are a reputation-protecting action for the victim, while a discreditable step is taking place for the wrong person. It is also important to forgive and protect the reputation of the person who made a mistake. Like the cultural past, gender causes men and women to choose different apology strategies. Various forms of apology are also influenced by factors such as age, income status, occupation, and ethnicity. The time to apologize, the environment, the mood of the interlocutor must be well calculated. If enough care is not given to them, the apology may not reach its purpose, and thus, there is no possibility of correcting the broken relationship. Since childhood, it is important to teach individuals that a person may have been guilty by making mistakes towards others, society and the environment. Also, individuals should be educated on apologizing from others when needed. The child should apologize when he/she makes a mistake by taking the model in his / her family and the people around him and should be forgiving in cases made against him/her. (shrink)

This paper proposes an application of Enrique Dussel’s ethics of liberation to an issue of crucial importance to US minorities: the debate on affirmative action. Over the past fifty years, this debate has been framed in terms of the opposition between advocates of affirmative action who claim that it is needed in order to achieve the integration and participation of traditionally oppressed groups to society without which there is no equality of rights, and critics who argue that affirmative (...) action violates equality by enforcing a double standard that undermines the ideal of a color-blind society. In this paper, I show how the basic principles of Dussel’s ethical theory (which are best expounded in his book Ethics of Liberation) allow us to address what I take to be the main demands of both advocates and critics of affirmative action in a satisfactory way. (shrink)

This book examines the theoretical foundations of order ethics and discusses business ethics problems from an order ethics perspective. Order ethics focuses on the social order and the institutional environment in which individuals interact. It is a well-established paradigm in European business ethics. The book contains articles written by leading experts in the field and provides both a concise introduction to order ethics and short summary articles homing in on (...) specific aspects of the order-ethical paradigm. It presents contributions describing fundamental concepts, historical roots, and the economic, social, and philosophical background of the theory. The second part of the handbook focuses on the theory's application in business, society, and politics, casting new light on an array of topics that loom large in contemporary ethical discourse.​. (shrink)

My purpose in this dissertation is to show that a wide-ranging investigation of Michael Polanyi's epistemology and ontology taken together with his social-political writings reveals the possibility of explicating an ethical language which can be seen, in Polanyi's terms, to be tacit within these works. The work naturally divides into two parts: the first deals with Polanyi's epistemology and ontology; the second deals with the social and political writings. ;The first part consists in two major arguments: the epistemological and the (...) ontological arguments. The epistemological argument consists in lifting out the fundamental dynamic of the knowing act in order to show that this dynamic might apply as well to the knowlede of values, if, as is pointed out, Polanyi includes many other objects of knowledge than those of science in his epistemology. The key point here is that value knowledge, like all forms of knowledge for Polanyi, must be seen as personal knowledge, i.e. value knowledge is rooted in a commitment to believe that some aspect of reality is touched in it, though the standard of correctness is neither a subjective standard nor a claim to complete objectivity but rather an obedience to a commitment to which we expect all persons, including ourselves, to submit. Value knowledge is personal knowledge. ;The second major argument of the first part is the ontological argument. I lift out the ontological structure of the knowing person to demonstrate that a right knowledge of values implies a commitment to the right action involved in attaining such knowledge. This intimate link between knowing and being is essentially the link between values and right actions. ;The first part of the dissertation establishes the possibility of a Polanyian ethic. After taking detailed exception to Harry Prosch's analysis of the possibility of a Polanyian ethic based upon his notion of symbols, an analysis which claimed that ethics must be grounded in a Polanyian understanding of symbols, I push forward the notion of personal ethical knowledge. . . . UMI. (shrink)

The ideas of Franz Rosenzweig have had relatively little impact outside of the circle of contemporary liberal Jewish thinkers. It is even more unlikely that his name would be found in any of the countless volumes an ethical theory. I argue that the ethical theory implied in his primary philosophical work, The Star of Redemption, is compelling and worth sustained and serious study by a wider audience. ;Rosenzweig rejects an Hegelian totalitarian ontological framework for ethics, in favor of a (...) relational ethics that is based on the immediate demands of a concretely contingent other. I construct the epistemological foundations for such an ethics out of his work, by drawing on an analogy from the new science of chaos and Rosenzweig's avowed reliance on Hermann Cohen's differential calculus of infinitesimals. ;In addition to considering the mathematical symbolic logic that serves to structure his epistemology, I consider how aesthetics plays a role in his ethical theory. I contrast essential elements of Rosenzweig's philosophy with those of Martin Heidegger's in order to specify why these two contemporaries have been so closely associated and why they should be more clearly distinguished from each other. Besides the obvious cultural parameters, what makes them similar is not only their univocal departure from a Western metaphysics of substance, but also a common concern to locate human beings in the vitally relational way that we exist in the world. Their differences are most clearly defined in how each respectively appropriates language and aesthetics in that locative process. ;For Heidegger, art as the way of language par excellence becomes the medium by which a human being becomes aware of his/her own solitary and finite existence through bringing one face-to-face with the ultimate nature of one's own death. For Rosenzweig, that same awareness is countered by his introduction of the revelatory experience of responsible love of one human being for an other, and which he analogically models on a dialogical encounter with God. I argue that the ultimate difference between these two thinkers, then, is that with Rosenzweig we are provided with the tools to develop an ethical theory that has contemporary relevance for responsible relationships, while with Heidegger, who openly rejects ethics as the context for a discourse on human authenticity, we are left with next to nothing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fatherhood and the Promise of EthicsKelly Oliver (bio)Both Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas reject the Freudian/Lacanian association of father with law and instead associate fatherhood with promise. For Ricoeur, fatherhood promises equality through contracts, while for Levinas, fatherhood promises singularity beyond the law. The tension between equality and singularity, between law and something beyond the law, is what is at stake in Derrida’s The Gift of Death. There, Derrida (...) describes ethics as a paradox between the universal and the individual, between equality and singularity. Kierkegaard’s reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis is the centerpiece of Derrida’s analysis. If we read The Gift of Death, with its focus on this story of father and son, in relation to Ricoeur and Levinas on the question of fatherhood, it reads as the culmination of a dialectical tension between the two. And if we read the Abraham story as a legend about father-son relations rather than just a parable of faith, The Gift of Death appears to uncover not just the paradoxical logic of ethics but also the uncompromising logic of patriarchy and paternal authority.Paternity Begets FraternityIn “Fatherhood: from Phantasm to Symbol” Ricoeur describes fatherhood as a battle of wills struggling for recognition. He brings together what he calls the different perspectives of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and religion in order to rearticulate the oedipal situation as a process of recognition (rather than a structure) which moves from the father as phantasm to the father as symbol and replaces images of real murder with symbolic sacrifice. Through his dialectical analysis, Ricoeur himself attempts to articulate a recognition of fatherhood that moves us away from the phantasm of the father as castrator to the symbol of the father as compassionate. Relying on Hegelian dialectics, Ricoeur outlines a movement from psychoanalysis’s fantastic image of an omnipotent father who must be killed so that the son might live, through Phenomenology of Spirit’s master-slave dialectic, to the Christian religious representation of the loving father sacrificing Himself through His son for the sake of all His children. In this higher stage of the dialectic of paternity, the murder of the father is replaced by his sacrifice. Oddly, however, Ricoeur’s dialectic remains at the level of the master-slave fight to the death, where—without the Hegelian resolution—the only options available to insure the recognition of the father by the son (or the son by the father) are murder or suicide. For Ricoeur, recognition requires death, symbolic if not imaginary, whereas Hegel insists that recognition comes only when the master and slave are willing to risk death but also realize the necessity of avoiding it; mutual recognition cannot be maintained if one of the parties is dead.For Ricoeur, recognition does not necessitate avoiding death but rather moving away from the realm of the family and the body to the level of the social and the law. In order for the father-son relationship to be one of mutual recognition, the father must sacrifice his absolute authority so that the son might also participate in it. The goal of recognition is equality, which can be achieved only through social contracts that abstract from the particulars of embodied familial relations. One such social operation is designation, [End Page 45] which is removed from the realm of the bodily drives that motivate the oedipal scenario. Designation requires the sublimation of bodily drives into abstract laws that can equalize bodies by turning them into symbols.The move from psychoanalysis to Christianity is a move from a domestic family to a social family: through God the Father’s sacrifice of His son, we all become members of the Christian family; we all become children of God. For Ricoeur, it is not that God is the Father because He gives the Law. Rather, the law, the covenant or contract, enables Him to be recognized as father [490]. Ricoeur implicitly rejects the Lacanian association of the Father with the Law or the Name. He claims that there is no Name of the Father. “Father” is not a name but a designation [Ricoeur 485]. And the father’s proper name is... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:GENDER AND THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST: A THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, 0.P. Aquinas Institute of Theology St. Louis, Missouri I. Does "Patriarchy" Explain the Tradition? HE CONGREGATION for the Doctrine of the Faith, n its 1976 Declaration on the Question of the Admission f Wonien to the Ministerial Priesthood, based its negative response primarily on tradition.1 For many this argument 1 Inter Insigniores (Oct. 15, 1976, AAS 69 (...) [1977]), Origins 6, 33 (Feb. 3, 1977) : 518-531. For a general bibliography on women's studies see Patricia K. Ballou, Women: A Bibliography of Bibliographies, 2nd ed. (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986). For select bibliography pro and con on the present topic see note 92, p. 560 of my Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian (St. Louis: Pope John Center, 1985) and Wendell E. Langley, S.J. and Rosemary J ermann, " Women and the ministerial priesthood: An annotated bibliography," Theology Digest 29 :329-42 (Winter '81). Strong cases against ordination are made by Louis Bouyer, W onzan in the Church, tr. by Marilyn Techert [Epilogue by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Essay by C. S. Lewis, "Priestesses in the Church"] (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1979) ; Manfred Hauke, Women in the Priesthood? A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption, tr. by David Kipp (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988); L. Ligier, "Women and the ministerial priesthood," Origins, 7:694-702 (April 20, 1978); and Patrick Dunn, Priesthood: A Re-Examination of the Roman Catholz'.c Theology of the Presbyterate (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1990), pp. 173-196. Strong cases for ordination are made by Ida Raming, The Exclusion of Women from Priesthood: Divine Law or Sex Discrimination, tr. by Norman R. Adams (Meutchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976) ; Haye von der Meer, Women Priests in the Catholic Chitrch: A Theological -Historical Investigation, tr. by Arlene and Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1973) ; George Tavard, Woman in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973) ; Karl Raimer, "Priestertum der Frau," Stimmen der Zeit, 195 :291-301 (May 1977) ; Joseph Komonchak, " Theological Questions on the Ordination of Women," Catholic Mind 75 CJan. 1977) : 13-28; Carroll Stuhlmueller, C. P., ed., Women and Priesthood: Future Directions (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1978); and Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983). 343 344 BENEDICT Mo ASHLEY, OoPo fails to persuade" It seems obvious to them that this " tradition " merely reflects the " patriarchalism " of the Jewish and pagan milieu of the early Church" The Declaration anticipated this objection when it pointed out (a) that Jesus was counter-cultural in many respects, especially in his attitude toward women; (b) a better explanation for the tradition can be found in the reality (res) which the sacrament of ordination symbolizes, namely, that the priest acts ini persona Christi capitis ecclesiae" Thus the essential role of a Christian priest is to represent Christ present and acting in his Church as its male Head" The Congregation formulated its conclusion cautiously: "The Church, in fidelity to the example of the Lord, does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination." 2 Thus no other opinion may be followed in practice, and if bishops or theologians raise questions about the meaning of the tradition they must not trivialize its importance nor arouse illusory expectations of change. Final judgment on the matter can only pertain to the magisterium. In what follows I will not explore the argument from tradition as such, but only the supporting argument from symbolism, in an attempt to fill in certain steps which it seems to me the Declaration passed over. Nor will I deal here with other secondary arguments against the Declaration's conclusion, particular the pragmatic argument that since Christians have a right to the Eucharist, the decline of male priestly vocations in many secularized countries justifies the ordination of women" H the Church has no power to ordain women validly, obviously that argument, however practically attractive, is beside the point2 2 Inter Insigniores, last paragraph of the Introduction. 3 The members of a local church have a " right " to the Eucharist only if they... (shrink)

This article challenges the idea that individual and collective agency require centred, fixed identities to be efficacious and meaningful. In post-foundational political thought, this idea frequently underpins an understanding of the subject as something temporarily consolidated through constitutive exclusions and a claim that political and ethical thought must negotiate the necessity for and inevitable failure of these exclusions. Against this thesis, the article presents a reading of Nietzsche’s analysis of the drives and their relation to the ego, holding that for (...) Nietzsche drives are synthesized into a complex but still dispersed assemblage that generates the illusion of unity in the form of an ego or ‘I’. For Nietzsche, the article argues, concrete agency is located in this assemblage of differences, the semblance of a centre being important in the coordination of these differences, but having no causal efficacy itself. The article concludes by examining whether Nietzsche falls into a variant of the ‘homunculus problem’ before turning to the doctrine of eternal return and showing how Nietzsche links his ethics to using the semblance of identity in order to overcome the need to link subjectivity to identity. (shrink)

In this article, we expand on the models available for defining various different business logics relevant to video game development, especially those concerning free-to-play games. We use the models to analyse those business logics from an Aristotelian virtue ethics perspective. We argue that if an individual wishes to follow the Aristotelian virtue ethics code in order to develop the virtues inherent in his or her own character, how he or she chooses to try and generate revenue from (...) the fruits of his or her labour is not irrelevant. Moreover, we argue that some of these methods are in fact vices, which are damaging to the character of the developer, and should therefore be avoided. (shrink)

According to the traditional interpretation, Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology deposes the concept of man and the notion of human nature from its central place in human and social sciences. While it’s necessary to acknowledge Lévi-Strauss’ distance vis-à-vis all philosophy based on intentionality, experience and consciousness of subject, we argue that the most interesting purpose of the structural anthropology lies elsewhere. Not only Lévi-Strauss never declared himself being part of anti-humanism movement, but most of all, his famous polemics with Sartre at the (...) end of La Pensée sauvage should be interpreted as part of his fight against ethnocentrism. The project of “dissolving the man” can be thus read as deconstructing the idea that western man makes of himself in the light of ethnological findings about universal structures orchestrating all human societies. We further show that the notion of subject survived its very death announced by the most radical structuralist thinkers and that structural method could be effectively employed in order to study different techniques and modes of subjectivation, revealing that “becoming subject” is a process structured by our language, symbolic universe and ethical teleology. (shrink)

Taken as a philosophical issue, the idea of representation implies the prior assumption of a difference between reality and its “doubles.” Things are paired with images, concepts, or symbols, acts with rules and norms, events with structures. Traditionally, the problem with representations has been their “accuracy,” the degree of fit between reality and its reproductions in the mind. When philosophers lost the hope of ever determining accuracy , they found consolation in the test of usefulness: a good representation is one (...) that works. The proof of its working is that it enables us to act on the world together.1 In such a frame, science, including anthropology, is conceived as the pursuit of privileged representations, privileged in that, by their nature of by their combination, they establish knowledge of a special kind. In the case of anthropology, “culture” has served as a sort of umbrella concept for representations. The strcuturalists have been most explicit about the need to think of representation in the plural, but their position is shared, in varying degrees, by all those who conceive of knowledge as the selection and combination of signs in systems, patterns, or structures, in short, as some kind of conceptual order ruling perceptual chaos. 1. Remember the connection between the Kantian quest for synthetic forms and Émile Durkheim’s idea of collective representations sustained by the moral authority of a society. Durkheim certainly was one to look for the “ethic” in the “ethnic” primitive, and it makes me wonder whether Stephen A. Tyler’s characterization of postmodern ethnography as a return to “an earlier and more powerful notion of the ethical character of all discourse, as captured in the ancient significance of the family of terms ‘ethos,’ ‘ethnos,’ ‘ethics’” might not signal a return to the Durkheimian fold . Johannes Fabian is professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. His publications include Jamaa: A Charismatic Movement in Katanga , Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object , and Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938 . Two books will appear in 1990: History from Below: The Vocabulary of Elisabethville by André Yav, a commented edition-translation of a colonial history written in Swahili by the colonized for the colonized, and Power and Performance, a study of conceptions of power through popular wisdom and theater in Shaba/Zaire. (shrink)

This study attempts to situate ethical discourse within descriptions of a moral context which do justice both to concrete individual moral experiences and to the socio-historical framework within which they are lived. In light of these descriptions it is argued that an adequate theory of morality must focus on the essential continuity between the individual moral life and the communal practices and institutions which constitute our ethical substance. ;In Chapter One it is shown how the existentialist liberation of the moral (...) subject centers ethical concerns around the concrete living individual, who, for the most part, had no place in traditional ethics. ;In Chapter Two it is argued that the existentialist revolt in morals is incomplete and misguided, insofar as the power of individual freedom is overemphasized and the weight of socio-historical reality is neglected. On the basis of hermeneutical analysis of human existence, it is shown how the cultural fabric of interpretations and practices sustains and gives meaning to the moral life. On the basis of Sartre's Marxism, it is shown how the social field of classes and violence alienates and frustrates our individual moral projects. ;In Chapter Three it is asked what implications for ethical theory and conduct emerge from these descriptions of the moral context. It is argued that while Heidegger's thought provides an important criticism of the history of ethics, it escapes all concrete applications to ethical discourse. In this respect Gadamer's hermeneutics is found more fruitful, although his Aristotelian account of the situated moral life underestimates the ideological distortions of the moral context as well as the power of moral consciousness to reject tradition and project its freedom. In order to abet such a critical account of morality, Habermas' analysis of the moral consciousness and its development within the socialization process is introduced. But it is argued that Habermas' emphasis on a theoretical grounding of ethical discourse loses touch with the concrete existential/historical dimension of the moral life. It is proposed that only by moving out from descriptions of individual experiences of injustices and wrongs will it be possible to successfully combine moral and social considerations in a critical theory with practical intent. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus: An English Translation by Bonhöffer, Adolf Friedrich, Discourses Book I by EpictetusEric BrownBonhöffer, Adolf Friedrich. The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus: An English Translation. Translated by William O. Stephens. Revisioning Philosophy, Vol. 2. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. Pp. xix + 335. Cloth, $56.95.Epictetus. Discourses Book I. Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Robert F. Dobbin. Clarendon Later Ancient (...) Philosophers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xxiv + 256. Cloth, $70.00.Epictetus has made a comeback, among scholars on account of the resurgence of interest in Stoicism and among a broader reading audience on account of folks as divergent as Vice-Admiral James Stockdale and Tom Wolfe (See J. Stockdale, “Testing Epictetus’ Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behaviour,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London 2 [1995]: 1–13, and T. Wolfe, A Man in Full [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998]). And because the ninety-five extant Discourses of Epictetus follow upon each other in no obvious order and frequently exhort without explaining, a guide to their contents is urgently needed. So it is timely that we now have an English translation of Bonhöffer’s landmark 1894 study of Epictetus’ ethics and the first commentary in English on the Discourses. Unfortunately, neither work fully addresses the needs of scholars or of fresh students.Bonhöffer argues in two important studies that the Discourses, written early in the second century C.E., essentially agree with the Stoicism of the third century B.C.E.: Epictet und die Stoa (1890) maintains this thesis for Epictetus’ epistemology and psychology, and Die Ethik des Stoiker Epictets (1894) extends the thesis to ethics. (Bonhöffer also [End Page 671] wrote a third study called Epiktet und das Neue Testament, which develops his frequent comparisons of Epictetan and early Christian thought.) Without Arnim’s Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Bonhöffer reconstructs early Stoic doctrines, and against the then-prevailing view that “late” Stoics are all eclectic, he demonstrates Epictetus’ prevailing fidelity to early Stoic orthodoxy.Occasionally, Bonhöffer’s zeal for his thesis outruns the evidence, although this complaint has been lodged against him more often unjustly than justly. Consider, for example, Bonhöffer’s treatment of to prosôpon (literally, the mask; figuratively, the role). In Discourses 1.2, Epictetus notes that “different people consider different things reasonable and unreasonable” and that to “bring our preconception of the reasonable and the unreasonable into conformity with nature … we consult not only the value of externals, but also what is in accordance with our prosôpon” (1.2.5–7, trans. Dobbin). At first glance, this seems to pick up on Panaetius’ theory of four prosopa (Latin, personae) recounted in De Officiıs I, according to which one ought to act in conformity with one’s own individual nature even though one’s primary responsibility is to the role assigned by universal nature. But Bonhöffer insists that Epictetus is not agreeing with Panaetius that individuality matters morally. Rather, Bonhöffer’s Epictetus says that our different characters “should be the same ⋯ it is simply a matter of whether one wants to be an educated person (philosophos) or an uneducated person (idiôtês)” (10–11, trans. Stephens, original pagination). Bonhöffer seems to have in mind the last sentence of Encheiridion 29 for the claim that there is just a philosophical prosôpon and an uneducated one.This might seem to fit too neatly Bonhöffer’s thesis (and his general scorn for Panaetius). But a close analysis of Discourses 1.2 shows that Bonhöffer’s judgment cannot be so quickly dismissed. Epictetus says that we do consult our character (1.2.7), and that for those in the habit of doing so, individual character does make a huge difference (1.2.28). This comes up short of saying that we should consult our character and that it should make a huge difference. Bonhöffer might overstate Epictetus’ rejection of Panaetian prosôpa, but the relationship is surely complex.For the translation Stephens and his editors thoughtfully provide the original pagination and... (shrink)

The value of up-hill skiing is double, it is first a sport and artistic expression, second it incorporates functional dependencies related to the natural obstacles which the individual aims to overcome. On the artistic side, M. Dufrenne shows the importance of living movement in dance, and we can compare puppets with dancers in order to grasp the lack of intentional spiritual qualities in the former. The expressivity of dance, as for, Chi Gong, ice skating or ski mountaineering is a (...) particular innocence and lightness which is called grace. It is life without the burden of worries. Grace, in slow progression uphill on snow, is as dance for Dufrenne, it has the most central and specific aesthetical quality of life. Others compared dance to a landscape, a landscape is for the sight, what dance is for life, a symbolical space, different from a usual space, where utility and dependency are present. A mountain can be a space of experience of natural beauty. Aesthetical qualities can be closely related to function related qualities as when a climber needs to adjust his movements to the natural convex inclination of the rocks, and avoid slippery forms of inclination, present on the other side of the mountain. The natural object, the quality of the snow or the rock differ from the aesthetical quality of the style of ascent by the absence of neutralization of the object, in case of a purely instrumental approach. On the contrary, grace in the rhythm of the progression of ski climbers needs a difference of attitude, which is not only proper to the playing, and delimited by the conditions of that play, but as a contingency driven attitude, without signification as radical alterity, without any finality. First ascent of the Matterhorn succeeded from the Swiss side, and not from the Italian side because of the different inclination of the rock on both sides. Grace in dance as in martial art or mountaineering is allowing to perceive an autonomy of the expression, as the truth of the perceived object, it puts away a cognitive and practical orientation and replaces it by a new meaning as movement in the whole set of movements done by the climber. This replacement of the functional expression resembles that operated by the painter who chooses a color in the whole set of colors in a painting, or a shape in the whole set of possible existing shapes. -/- Ref. Dufrenne, Mikel, (1989): The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, trans. by Edward S. Casey, 1st publ. in 1953, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (shrink)

There are cases such as climate change where the cumulative effects of the actions of several agents lead to grave harm but where no individual agent can make a perceptible difference for the better or worse. According to Derek Parfit, dealing with such imperceptible difference cases requires substantial changes to the way we think about morality. In On What Matters, Parfit builds on Kantian Ethics to address the problem of imperceptible differences, but the transformation that Kant's theory undergoes in (...) his hands is radical. I argue that Parfit's changes to Kant's theory are not only unnecessary but also detrimental to making sense of the ethical dimensions of action in collective contexts. Building on the notion of imperfect duties, I offer an alternative solution to the problem of imperceptible difference cases that remains closer to Kant's original theory and avoids the difficulties of Parfit's approach. (shrink)

This book makes explicit the ecological implications of Martin Heidegger. It examines how the trajectory of Heidegger's thinking harbors an "ecological turn," which comes to the forefront in his attempt to anticipate the impending crisis precipitated by modern technology. Schalow's emphasis on such key motifs as stewardship, dwelling, and 'letting be' serves to coalesce the problem of freedom in a new and innovative way, in order to expand the interpretive or hermeneutic horizon for re-examining Heidegger's philosophy. By prioritizing a (...) response to today's environmental crisis and the possible impact upon future generations, the author traverses a divide within Heidegger scholarship by developing a deeper, critical outlook on his philosophy--without either reiterating standard interpretations or rejecting it wholesale. He develops a trans-human approach to ethics, which, by prioritizing the welfare of the earth, nature, and animals, counters the anthropocentric bias and destructive premise of modern technology. Heidegger's Ecological Turn will be of interest to Heidegger scholars and researchers working in phenomenology, hermeneutics, continental philosophy, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

This article considers the common social act of apologising in the context of professional discipline of lawyers in Australia. It is argued that other social contexts in which an apology occurs, and the meanings generated, inform its use within this legal context. It is from the social meaning that apologies can be used as a legitimate way to gain insights into a person's ethical state of mind in disciplinary hearings. However, there are a range of difficulties, both practical and theoretical, (...) posed in importing a social symbol into a legal context. The article considers issues concerning the process of discipline, the dangers of the act becoming purely instrumental and interpretive difficulties. Finally, the nature of the entry controls applying to lawyers - the 'character test' - is itself contestable. The article argues that, despite this constraint, apologies provide a useful evidential tool to gauge a lawyer's ethical awareness without relying on assumptions about fixed personality traits. Finally, the article argues for a greater emphasis on alternative sanctioning options, such as those which require the lawyer to demonstrate his or her remorse or fulfil a promise over time. It then turns to the question of whether an (ordered) apology should be one of the available sanctions. (shrink)