Although non-profit organisations typically have high representation of females on their boards, relatively little is known about the effects of gender diversity in these organisations particularly in relation to financial management. In this archival study, resource dependency theory and agency analysis are combined to provide theoretical insight and empirical analysis of gender diversity on effective financial management in member-governed, community financial institutions. The investigation is possible due to the unique characteristics of the organisational form and region being examined—credit unions in (...) Northern Ireland. The sector has not been subject to external regulation on board gender, yet a wide array of gender mix on boards ranging from 100 % male to 100 % female are in existence. In addition, effective financial management is crucial to their survival and their ability to meet member objectives. Boards with higher female representation exhibit superior financial management first, in respect of loan book quality in the period of austerity following the financial crisis and second when measured against return on assets. (shrink)

This article explores the virtues of generosity and magnificence in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Generosity involves private individuals giving moderately; magnificence is spending by individuals on a grand scale for public purposes. Inequality, it is argued, grounds and motivates these virtues. For Aristotle, generosity and magnificence are products of inherited wealth, and the generous and the magnificent person seek the noble in their actions rather than the benefit of their recipients. The generous and the magnificent intend to place themselves in a (...) superior position to those who receive their gifts.Moreover, magnificence flows from a great inequality of wealth and requires that the provision of public goods be in private hands. Aristotle, this article suggests, means to critique rather than embrace these virtues by pointing to the inequality and privacy at their foundation. The way in which Aristotle’s theory of justice supplements his analysis of generosity and magnificence is also brought to light. (shrink)

Contemplating friendship in Aristotle's Ethics -- Teleology, inequality and autonomy -- Moral virtue: possibilities and limits -- Justice: giving to each what is owed -- Intellectual virtue, Akrasia and political philosophy -- Citizens, friends and philosophers -- Happiness and maternal contemplation.

Aristotle’s discussion of political friendship points to perfect friendship and the possibility that the good citizen can be the good person. This conclusion is arrived at by reflection on three problems raised in Aristotle’s analysis. First, citizen friendships of utility are the cause of civil strife. Second, there is a tension between citizen friendship in timocracy and justice. Although citizen friendship in a timocracy can aspire to perfect friendship, political justice requires kingship. Third, familial friendship, although natural, is more limited (...) in scope than political friendship. This article concludes with Aristotle’s discussion of conflicting obligations that opens up two grounds of natural friendship: relations to persons through body, and relations to persons who are virtuous. Virtue relations in timocracy allow citizen friendship to resemble perfect friendship. (shrink)

Matter and Form explores the relationship between natural science and political philosophy from the classical to contemporary eras, taking an interdisciplinary approach to the philosophic understanding of the structure and process of the natural world and its impact on the history of political philosophy. It illuminates the importance of philosophic reflection on material nature to moral and political theorizing, mediating between the sciences and humanities and making a contribution to ending the isolation between them.

Inspired by the work of prominent University of Notre Dame political philosophers Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert, this volume of essays explores the concept of natural right in the history of political philosophy. The central organizing principle of the collection is the examination of the idea of natural justice, identified in the classical period with natural right and in modernity with the concept of individual natural rights. Contributors examine the concept of natural right and rights in all the manifold and (...) interdisciplinary dimensions associated with the Zuckerts’ oeuvre. Part I explores the theme of natural right in the ancient and medieval political philosophy of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and St. Augustine. Part II examines the early modern break from the classical tradition in the work of Montaigne, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Locke, and Hegel as well as the legacy of the modern natural rights tradition as explored by Leo Strauss and Pope John Paul II. Part III treats the theme of natural rights from the Puritans through the Founding period in such figures as Thomas Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris and up to the Progressive era with Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. Part IV addresses questions of natural justice in literature, including works of Euripides, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Edith Wharton, and Tom Stoppard. "In this collection compiled in honor of Catherine and Michael Zuckert, the contributors address a wonderful variety of serious issues in important literary and philosophic texts. Their topics range from Plato on piety to Stoppard on socialist utopianism, and from Aristotle and Augustine to Euripides, Locke, Hegel, Shakespeare, and Booker T. Washington. The volume stands as an impressive introduction to the liberal arts and a lively introduction to many great issues of liberalism, Christianity, justice, and liberty; it is also a tribute to the Zuckerts' breadth of study, teaching, and influence." —_Robert K. Faulkner, Boston College_. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 7-8, November - December 2019, Page 693-694.

ABSTRACTThis article explores the importance of the Socratic turn to Hegel’s conception of reason in the Philosophy of History. In the “Introduction” to his work, Hegel initially argues that Socrat...

This article addresses the debate between Afrocentrists like Martin Bernal and classical scholars such as Mary Lefkowitz and Robert Palter concerning the origins of ancient Greek civilization. Focusing on the first half of Herodotus’ Histories, I argue that, although Greek cultural developments can be attributed to the Greeks themselves, Herodotus indicates that the conditions that made these developments possible were due to the prior Greek absorption of important aspects of Egyptian religion. Herodotus shows that the Greeks learned from the Egyptians (...) to individualize their gods and to appreciate the humanity of women. This Egyptian influence, Herodotus suggests, is what allowed the Greeks, in contrast to the Scythians, to become an object to themselves within the context of stable city life. I conclude that this habit of self-reflection is the source of the uniquely Greek contribution to the art, philosophy, science and politics of the West. (shrink)

This book explores the recovery of Socratic philosophy in 19th century political thought of G.W.F. Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill, and Friedrich Nietzsche. For Kierkegaard the Socratic indivdual in modern times is the person of faith, for Mill the idiosyncratic public intellectual, and for Nietzsche the Dionysian artist.