Although Arendt is usually read as a theorist of participatory democracy, her writings on judgment also offer a way of thinking about the role of citizens who do not actively participate, citizens who are more spectators than actors. The difficulties and ambiguities in her account of judgment especially, the elusiveness of standards of judgment arise from her effort to insure that individuals take full responsibility for their judgments.

Benjamin Constant's famous lecture comparing ancient and modern liberty can be better understood if it is read alongside a set of unpublished lectures on ancient religion that he delivered one year earlier. Those lectures suggest that Constant's commitment to modern liberty was based in part on his deep anxieties about religious freedom, and that he valued religious freedom because he thought the "religious sentiment" was an important manifestation of a natural human capacity for self-development. In putting religion and self-development at (...) the heart of his vision, he tried to show that modern liberty could have a positive moral or spiritual purpose beyond merely assuring people freedom from interference in the pursuit of their interests. (shrink)

Although Arendt is usually read as a theorist of participatory democracy, her writings on judgment also offer a way of thinking about the role of citizens who do not actively participate, citizens who are more spectators than actors. The difficulties and ambiguities in her account of judgment especially, the elusiveness of standards of judgment arise from her effort to insure that individuals take full responsibility for their judgments.

Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought is a really wonderful book, full of thought and richly suggestive. It’s also an ambitious book, daring to reinterpret a book that we all teach an...

Lucas Swaine attempts to persuade theocrats of the value of liberty of conscience. But his promotion of principles of conscience for theocratic communities reveals a divided spirit in contemporary liberalism, which is torn between wanting to respect religion as it is and wanting to reform or liberalize it.

Among the astonishing variety of sources mentioned in Martin Jay's new book on lying in politics the reader will find ancient Greek philosophical dialogues, pamphlet controversies between eighteenth-century philosophers, post-structural literary theories and, resting easily among the likes of these, a familiar old joke. “How can you tell when a politician is lying?” Jay asks. “He moves his lips” is the answer my grandfather used to give, and that is the punch-line that Jay recounts here. But my grandfather told the (...) joke as part of a syllogism whose unstated premise was “lying is bad” and whose common-sense conclusion was that politics is corrupt. Jay is not satisfied with that conclusion. His book, The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics , puts forward a very different argument: He assumes that politics is worthwhile, suggests that it is unavoidably linked to lying, and concludes that lying must not be as bad as we think it is. There are a host of complications and caveats, so many that one could spend a whole review admiring the virtuosity involved in constructing such a rich pastiche of historical episodes and texts touching on mendacity. But the frisson that the book provokes comes almost entirely from its willingness to flirt with the endorsement of vice, so any serious engagement with it cannot avoid responding in some way to that flirtation. (shrink)

Jeffrey Tulis’s The Rhetorical Presidency should not be read as a tale of decline. It is not a call for an “un‐rhetorical” presidency so much as an exploration of the fundamentally uneasy place that popular rhetoric occupies in constitutional governments. Popular rhetoric is one way that executives exercise their prerogative power, and the dilemmas about rhetoric that Tulis exposes arise from a fundamental fact about prerogative power that all presidents must confront: Strong constitutional governments seem almost necessarily to grant their (...) chief executives more discretionary authority than is consistent with the idea of constitutional government. Whatever rhetorical style or strategy a president adopts, he must respond in one way or another to this fact. (shrink)

In his account of how each of us deliberates about what to do, Aristotle remarks that we do not always trust ourselves on important matters and so sometimes take counsel from others. Taking counsel from others is, in some ways, merely an expansion of the internal activity of deliberation; the suggestions come from other people rather than from our ownminds, but the judgment about them remains our own. In other ways, however, taking counsel is quite different from deliberating with oneself. (...) These differences are the subject matter of the art of rhetoric, as Aristotle understands it. The paper compares the political relationship at work in deliberative rhetoric with slavery, which collapses the separateness of persons, and with friendship, which preserves it. And suggests that the importance of anger in Aristotle’s treatment of rhetoric can be understood as a reflection on the implications of human separateness. (shrink)

Robert Wokler was one of the world's leading experts on Rousseau and the Enlightenment, but some of his best work was published in the form of widely scattered and difficult-to-find essays. This book collects for the first time a representative selection of his most important essays on Rousseau and the legacy of Enlightenment political thought. These essays concern many of the great themes of the age, including liberty, equality and the origins of revolution. But they also address a number of (...) less prominent debates, including those over cosmopolitanism, the nature and social role of music and the origins of the human sciences in the Enlightenment controversy over the relationship between humans and the great apes. These essays also explore Rousseau's relationships to Rameau, Pufendorf, Voltaire and Marx; reflect on the work of important earlier scholars of the Enlightenment, including Ernst Cassirer and Isaiah Berlin; and examine the influence of the Enlightenment on the twentieth century. One of the central themes of the book is a defense of the Enlightenment against the common charge that it bears responsibility for the Terror of the French Revolution, the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth-century and the Holocaust. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the impact of individualism and collectivism on three basic aspects of ethical decision making - the perception of moral problems, moral reasoning, and behavior. We argue that the inclusion of business practices within the moral domain by the individual depends partly upon individualism and collectivism. We also propose a pluralistic approach to post-conventional moral judgment that includes developmental paths appropriate for individualist and collectivist cultures. Finally, we argue that the link between moral judgment and behavior (...) is related to individualism and collectivism. (shrink)

Increasingly research in the field of business and society suggests that ethics and corporate social responsibility can be profitable. Yet this work raises a troubling question: Is it ethical to use ethics and social responsibility in a strategic way? Is it possible to be ethical or socially responsible for the wrong reason? In this article, we define a strategy concept in order to situate the different approaches to the strategic use of ethics and social responsibility found in the current literature. (...) We then analyze the ethics of such approaches using both utilitarianism and deontology and end by defining limits to the strategic use of ethics. (shrink)

This volume explores the problems and prospects attending evangelical engagement with natural law as a key feature for political thought. Engaging theology, philosophy, political theory and biblical studies, many contributors are optimistic about the prospects of evangelical re-appropriation of natural law, but note ways in which evangelical commitments might lend distinctive shape to this engagement.

In this article, we examine the relationship of the multinational firm’s market environment, stakeholders, resources, and values to the development of strategic social planning and strategic social positioning. Using a sample of multinational enterprises in Mexico, we examine the relationship of these different ways of conducting social strategy to the creation of value by the firm. The market conditions of munificence and dynamism, and the resource for continuous innovation are found to be related to strategic social positioning. The social responsibility (...) orientation of the firm is related to strategic social planning. Positioning is related to value creation for the multinational firm, but planning is not. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice. (shrink)

The decision to internalize corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, to outsource them in the form of corporate philanthropy, or to collaborate with otherorganizations is of great significance to the ability of the firm to reap benefits from such activity. Using insights provided by the new institutional economics and the resourcebased view of the firm, this paper describes how the variables of centrality and specificity affect CSR governance choice. This framework is tested using data collected from Central America and Mexico. Support (...) is found for the relevance of centrality, but not for specificity. The paper discusses directions for future research and concludes with the managerial implications of this research. (shrink)

I will discuss two themes that can be found in Mark Sagoff's most recent book, Price, Principle, and the Environment. Built from pieces fashioned in his entertaining and incisive critical es...

Literature on corporate social responsibility has tended to treat economic benefits to the firm as unintentional spillovers that result from laudable CSR behavior. Empirical studies of the relationship between CSR and corporate financial performance have reported mixed findings. This article shifts the conceptual and empirical focus to investigate the conditions under which intentional profit-seeking through corporate social action projects can create economic value for the firm. The article uses resource-dependency theory and the resource-based view to define the firm’s external and (...) internal environments respectively. From that perspective, the article looks at how corporate social action creates economic value through strategic social planning and strategic social positioning. A survey instrument was developed and applied to 110 large Spanish firms. In that sample, munificence and continuous innovation positively affect social positioning, while nongovernmental organization salience and social responsibility orientation positively affect social planning. Both social positioning and social planning in turn contribute to corporate ability to create value. The article concludes with a discussion of the research and managerial implications of these findings. (shrink)

Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the nontranscendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei-Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in terms of the extent to which their representation of Confucian ethics reflects (...) and is consistent with the view that in early China the cosmos was conceived to be organismic, nontranscendent, and nondualistic. (shrink)

Language comprehension requires a simulation that uses neural systems involved in perception, action, and emotion. A review of recent literature as well as new experiments support five predictions derived from this framework. 1. Being in an emotional state congruent with sentence content facilitates sentence comprehension. 2. Because women are more reactive to sad events and men are more reactive to angry events, women understand sentences about sad events with greater facility than men, and men understand sentences about angry events with (...) greater facility than women. 3. Because it takes time to shift from one emotion to another, reading a sad sentence slows the reading of a happy sentence more for women than men, whereas reading an angry sentence slows the reading of a happy sentence more for men than for women. 4. Because sad states motivate affiliative actions and angry states motivate aggressive action, gender and emotional content of sentences interact with the response mode. 5. Because emotion simulation requires particular action systems, adapting those action systems will affect comprehension of sentences with emotional content congruent with the adapted action system. These results have implications for the study of language, emotion, and gender differences. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

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

The literature on affective determinants of physical activity is growing rapidly. The present paper aims to provide greater clarity regarding the definition and distinctions among the various affect-related constructs that have been examined in relation to PA. Affective constructs are organized according to the Affect and Health Behavior Framework, including: affective response to PA; incidental affect; affect processing; and affectively charged motivational states. After defining each category of affective construct, we provide examples of relevant research showing how each construct may (...) relate to PA behavior. We conclude each section with a discussion of future directions for research. (shrink)

Controversy persists over the ethics of compensating research participants and providing posttrial benefits to communities in developing countries. Little is known about residents' views on these subjects. In this study, interviews about compensation and posttrial benefits from a hypothetical HIV vaccine trial were conducted in Uganda’s Rakai District. Most respondents said researchers owed the community posttrial benefits and research compensation, but opinions differed as to what these should be. Debates about posttrial benefits and compensation rarely include residents' views like these, (...) but future ones should. (shrink)

A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and (...) understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care. (shrink)

Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA), a project funded by the American Philosophical Association (APA) and headed by Carolyn Dicey Jennings (UC Merced), aims “to make information on academic job placement useful to prospective graduate students in philosophy.” The project has just been updated to include new data, which Professor Jennings describes in a post at New APPS. She also announces a new interactive data tool with which one can sift through and sort information. (from Daily Nous).

This paper is one of the four interrelated action agenda papers resulting from the National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness convened in June 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and multi-disciplinary partners. Each of the action agenda papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities; competency in using those laws; coordination of law-based public health actions; and information. Options presented in this paper are for consideration by policymakers and (...) practitioners — in all jurisdictions and all relevant sectors and disciplines — with responsibilities for all-hazards emergency preparedness.One expert's framing of the mission of public health may help improve understanding of the range of hazards for which to be legally prepared. These hazards include urgent realities — such as chronic disease, injury, disabilities, conventional communicable diseases, and an aging and obese population — and urgent threats, such as pandemic influenza, natural disasters, and terrorism. (shrink)

This paper is one of the four interrelated action agenda papers resulting from the National Summit on Public Health Legal Preparedness convened in June 2007 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and multi-disciplinary partners. Each of the action agenda papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities; competency in using those laws; coordination of law-based public health actions; and information. Options presented in this paper are for consideration by policymakers and (...) practitioners — in all jurisdictions and all relevant sectors and disciplines — with responsibilities for all-hazards emergency preparedness.One expert's framing of the mission of public health may help improve understanding of the range of hazards for which to be legally prepared. These hazards include urgent realities — such as chronic disease, injury, disabilities, conventional communicable diseases, and an aging and obese population — and urgent threats, such as pandemic influenza, natural disasters, and terrorism. (shrink)

How secular is contemporary society? Are pockets of sectarianism embedded in societies of developed countries? This timely book examines the interweaving of politics and religion, and of tradition and innovation in a variety of cultural settings. Eminent scholars from four continents examine here current turmoil in religious beliefs, practices, and organization--not only in the Western world, but in South America, Africa, South Asia, New Zealand, and Japan. They scrutinize evidence of religious change, decline, and revival; investigate challenges posed by new (...) religious movements; and locate religious change and conflict in the context of broader shifts in consciousness and culture. Contributors include Richard Fenn, Phillip E. Hammond, David Martin, Philip Rieff, Roland Robertson, and Mark Schibley. With its focus on the interplay of secularization, rationalism, and sectarianism, this work offers a fitting tribute to Bryan Wilson, who has made so many contributions to the sociological understanding of these phenomena. (shrink)

This dissertation is comprised of two big essays. The first seeks to understand what is at stake in the project of music analysis writ large. I argue for adopting a conception of musical analysis as a practical activity oriented toward the having of what Dewey calls "integral experiences." I cash out this idea with help from Wittgenstein's notion of aspect perception ("seeing as"), whose musical applications I demonstrate in a discussion of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. I then use my model of (...) music analysis to give a reading of David Lewin's analysis of Schubert's "Morgengruss." The second essay seeks to understand what is at stake in the project of Schenkerian musical analysis in particular. I offer an extended reconstruction of Schenker's theory of organic unity in response to objections to Schenker's "necessitarian" language, i.e. his penchant for claiming that a musical masterwork must be as it is (in some to-be-determined sense of "must"). I accomplish this by giving a normative reading of Schenker's theory of absolute music, a reading which understands Schenker's musical absolutism as at root a theory of the proper norms of musical hearing. I then argue that the observance of these norms induces one to explain musical structures teleologically. Schenker's necessitarian language, I contend, makes sense once it is situated within the context of Kant's theory of biological explanation, as set out in his Critique of Teleological Judgment, the second half of his Critique of the Power of Judgment. (shrink)

In this article I offer a three-pronged defense of Millian theories, all of which share the rough idea that all there is to a proper name is its referent, so it has no additional sense. I first give what I believe to be the first correct analysis of Kripke’s puzzle and its anti-Fregean lessons. The main lesson is that the Fregean’s arguments against Millianism and for the existence of semantically relevant senses (that is, individuative elements of propositions or belief contents (...) that are sensitive to our varying personal conceptions of the referents of those elements) are viciously circular. Thus, the Fregean must give new arguments for her central claims. Second, I offer an original, positive argument for the Millian idea that the thoughts that Cicero was bald and that Tully was bald are identical. Incredibly, the argument appeals to nothing but highly intuitive, pre-theoretical principles regarding folk psychological usage—traditionally the source of Fregean intuitions. Third, I examine one of the most important recent papers on Kripke’s puzzle, that by David Sosa (1996). Sosa claims to have found a way to turn the tables on Kripke’s puzzle by using it to argue against Millian theories. I argue that Sosa’s argument on behalf of the Fregean is question-begging. I conclude that Millian theories can be seriously defended without any use of theoretical constructs such as guises or Russellian propositions, and Fregeans need to start over arguing for their theory’s central claims. (shrink)

The pragmatic conception of truth, anticipated by Henry David Thoreau and developed by C.S. Peirce and subsequent pragmatists, is proposed as a useful analogy for characterising 'sustainability.' Peirce's definitions of 'truth' provides an attractive approach to sustainability because (a) it re-focuses discussions of truth and objectivity from a search for 'correspondence' to an 'external world' (the 'conform' approach) to a more forward-looking ('transform') approach; and (b) it emphasises the crucial role of an evolving, questioning community in the conduct of (...) inquiry. Any successful definition of sustainability must share these characteristics with Peircean truth. While Peirce and John Dewey never reconciled their disagreements regarding the nature and task of 'inquiry', a pragmatist resolution of their differences is offered, arguing that we need both a logic of management sciences (logica utens) and a logic of pure science (logica docens), which (perhaps among other differences) respond very differently to uncertainty. It is shown that adaptive management – can be understood as a first approximation of a logica utens for social learning in pursuit of solutions to environmental problems, and it is suggested that a pragmatist, transform approach to inquiry such as Dewey's may provide a way around the 'fact-value' gulf. (shrink)