Ethical thought is articulated around normative concepts. Standard examples of normative concepts are good, reason, right, ought, and obligatory. Theorists often treat the normative as an undifferentiated domain. Even so, it is common to distinguish between two kinds of normative concepts: evaluative or axiological concepts, such as good, and deontic concepts, such as ought. This encyclopedia entry discusses the many differences between the two kinds of concepts.

This article explores the meanings of social class for American women who have experienced downward mobility after divorce. These women experienced social class as a process of negotiation, and subjective elements often predominated over objective criteria. However, serious changes in their material reality subsequently forced redefinition of class identity. While divorced women sometimes identify with other women in the same situation, this identification is often mitigated by the effects of stigma and cognitive processes of differentiation, inhibiting the development of a (...) collective group identity. Theoretically, the study showed that social class identity needs to be seen as changing over time, at times existing in a state of conflict between subjective identification and objective economic status, rather than as a neatly resolved or static social identity. (shrink)

Qualitative research in psychology has tended to draw on a relatively narrow range of research methods, and the recent shift towards the analysis of material involving `naturally occurring talk' in some areas of psychology has reinforced this trend. This article discusses the implications of a preference for the analysis of `naturally occurring talk' or `naturalistic records' across the full range of qualitative psychology research. In particular, I focus on how researchers are positioned in debates over the advantages and limitations of (...) analysing `naturally occurring data' and research interviews. Drawing on examples from a current project concerned with the meanings of consumption for young people, I interrogate the assumptions associated with a preference for analysing `naturalistic records' and consider some of the benefits as well as the problems involved in using research practices that involve a degree of direct engagement between the researcher and other participants. This article is therefore discussing the origins as well as the implications of the preference for analysing `naturally occurring data'. (shrink)

This article focuses on the representation of youth as a key moment of transition in contemporary western societies, set between the dependent state of childhood and the supposed maturity and independence of adult status. Young people are viewed as gendered, racialized and sexualized beings who also occupy specific class locations, and are assumed to move through crucial points of transition as they leave full-time education and enter the job market, as well as the (hetero)sexual and marriage marketplaces. The article examines (...) some of the main discursive configurations and treatment regimes through which ‘troubled teens’ are constructed and managed, especially in relation to notions about disordered patterns of consumption and transition. The paper considers the moment of the ‘discovery’ of adolescence in the late nineteenth century, going on to examine young women's particular relationships to discourses around consumption in the contemporary British youth research literature, and to debates about ‘disrupted transitions’ and citizenship in the 1990s. The article ends with a brief examination of one approach to the ‘problem of troubled teens’ in the USA: Specialty Schools that offer a combination of educational, therapeutic and correctional regimes aimed at young people who have been identified in relation to various disorders of transition and consumption. (shrink)

Fourteen enjoyable papers, from the Theoretical Archaeology Conference held in Oxford in December 2000, which reflect on the relationship between archaeology and the outside world' and investigate the meaning of archaeology to the general public and the relevance of archaeology to society. Essays examine the development of archaeology as a discipline through the medieval, Romantic and Post-Modern eras, looking, for example, at the treatment of archaeological themes in the works of Mary Shelley and Byron. Contributors also consider the impact of (...) Stonehenge on astronomical studies, the influence of Roman finds and sites, including Bath and Caerleon, on Edwardian jewellery and children's stories and the dramatisation of the Iceman's' discovery in a recent play. (shrink)

This ground-breaking and lucid contribution to the vibrant field of virtue ethics focuses on the influential work of Hume and Nietzsche, providing fresh perspectives on their philosophies and a compelling account of their impact on the development of virtue ethics. A ground-breaking text that moves the field of virtue ethics beyond ancient moral theorists and examines the highly influential ethical work of Hume and Nietzsche from a virtue ethics perspective Contributes both to virtue ethics and a refreshed understanding of Hume’s (...) and Nietzsche’s ethics Skilfully bridges the gap between continental and analytical philosophy Lucidly written and clearly organized, allowing students to focus on either Hume or Nietzsche Written by one of the most important figures contributing to virtue ethics today. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: In its first part, we work out the key features of constitutivism as presented by Christine Korsgaard. This reconstruction serves to clarify which goals Korsgaard wants to achieve with her account and which of its central claims she has to defend in particular. In the second part, we discuss whether Korsgaard can vindicate constitutivism's most central claim. To do this, we analyse two important arguments - the argument from unavoidability and the argument (...) from the abstract constitutive principle - that have been made in support of constitutivism. We show how both these arguments go amiss and conclude that at least for now, constitutivism's most central claim has not been successfully argued for. (shrink)

C an actions caused by emotions be free and autonomous? The so-called rationalist conception of autonomy denies this. Only actions done in the light of reflexive choices can be autonomous and hence free. I argue that the rationalist conception does not make room for akratic actions, that is, free and intentional actions performed against the agent’s best judgement. I then develop an account inspired by Harry Frankfurt and David Shoemaker, according to which an action is autonomous when it is determined (...) by the agent’s most central cares, where cares are defined in terms of emotional dispositions. (shrink)

Ce premier volume des Ontologies de la création en musique tente d'isoler quelques modes d'existence de l'acte en musique, sans prétention à l'exhaustivité. Envisagée tour à tour comme un acte politique, un acte compositionnel, un acte ou une action improvisée, une action physique sur l'instrument, la musique nous révèle l'une de ses précieuses facettes : elle est, en empruntant les mots à Bergson, un art qui permet d'agir en Homme de pensée et de penser en Homme d'action.

Slavoj Žižek’s methodological reliance on analogy, tautology, and examples - and particularly on crude, humorous, or popular ones - is an oft-discussed and controversial feature of his work. My aim throughout this paper is to examine certain philosophical concerns - and namely universality - in Žižek’s work. As I will propose, tautology and analogy - particularly when understood vis-a-vis desire - offer us a rhetorical means of exploring these concerns; insofar as we accept tautology and analogy as strategic/pedagogic devices, they (...) are therefore subject to investigations that exceed their immediately apparent use-value of clarifying an unknown concept. Through an examination of the strategic place of tautology and analogy in Žižek's work, this paper seeks to subject such methods to analysis in the context of broader philosophical concerns which appear across Žižek's oeuvre - namely universality, parallax, minimal difference, and the 'location' of the objet a in this comprehension of difference. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss accounts of agency, participation, and self-determination by David Crocker and Stacy Kosko because they acknowledge that relationships of power can determine who gets to participate and when. Kosko usefully applies the concept of agency vulnerability to the case of the self-determination of indigenous peoples. I examine the specific context of Canada’s history as a settler nation, a history that reflects attempts to denigrate, dismiss and erase Indigenous laws, practices, languages, and traditions. I argue that this (...) history displays epistemic injustice in that the dominant collective interpretative resources of non-Indigenous Canadians have allowed the dismissal of the collective interpretative resources of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. This gap in collective interpretative resources can explain that Canada’s constitution, institutions, laws, and structures reflect the dominant collective interpretative resources of a colonizing nation, ones that have delineated and restricted the agency, participation, and self-determination of Indigenous Canadians. One important outcome of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and of its National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls is bringing the rich history of Indigenous collective interpretative resources and the networks of relationships shaped by them to light. By discussing examples from these reports, I give substance to the argument that foundational and structural injustices in settler nations are at bottom epistemic injustices, ones that have implications for accounts of agency, participation, and self-determination. (shrink)

Within the liberal framework, policies designed to rectify inequality generally take two forms: the formal equality option of equal treatment for everyone or the substantive equality option of "special" treatment for those whose difference continues to matter. Martha Minow argues that the framework creates a "dilemma of difference" because each option risks creating or perpetuating further disadvantages for members of oppressed groups. This paper examines the framework and the dilemma by highlighting the relational features of the language of equality and (...) of people who make determinations of equality. Relational insights are used to reexamine feminist work on care ethics, work considered to be hostile to equality analysis and justice theory. By providing a relational critique both of care ethics and of justice theory, I attempt to bring the two closer together by highlighting various connections. Care and justice are not entirely or always in opposition, but they inevitably interact and intertwine in ways that allow new possibilities and ways of being in social relations to emerge. (shrink)

In this volume, renowned scholars come together to reflect on Michael Krausz’s examinations of the relation between interpretation and ontology, the varieties of relativism, and the interpretive dimension of identity.

Now available in three thematic volumes, the second edition of _Moral Issues in Global Perspective_ is a collection of the newest and best articles on current moral issues by moral and political theorists from around the globe. Each volume seeks to challenge the standard approaches to morality and moral issues shaped by Western liberal theory and to extend the inquiry beyond the context of North America. Covering a broad range of issues and arguments, this collection includes critiques of traditional liberal (...) accounts of rights, justice, and moral values, while raising questions about the treatment of disadvantaged groups within and across societies affected by globalization. Providing new perspectives on issues such as war and terrorism, reproduction, euthanasia, censorship, and the environment, each volume of _Moral Issues in Global Perspective_ incorporates work by race, class, feminist, and disability theorists. _Moral and Political Theory_, the first of the three volumes, surveys a number of traditional Western liberal approaches to moral theory, human rights, justice, and democracy, as well as contemporary critiques of these approaches. With nineteen new essays, three of which were written especially for this edition, this volume covers the necessary theories for understanding moral issues in a global context. _Moral Issues in Global Perspective_ is available in three separate volumes—_Moral and Political Theory_, _Human Diversity and Equality_, and _Moral Issues_. (shrink)

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, John Rawls received his undergraduate and graduate education at Princeton. After earning his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1950, Rawls taught at Princeton, Cornell, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and, since 1962, at Harvard, where he is now emeritus. Rawls is best known for A Theory of Justice (1971) and for developments of that theory he has published since. Rawls believes that the utilitarian tradition has dominated modern political philosophy in English-speaking countries because its critics (...) have failed to develop an alternative social and political theory as complete and systematic. Rawls's aim is to develop such an alternative: a contractarian view of justice, derived from the tradition of Locke, Rousseau, and especially Kant. Rawls carries social contract theory to a "higher order of abstraction" by viewing the principles of justice themselves as the objects of a social contract. Justice is the solution to a problem, which arises in this way: Society, as it is conceived in a liberal democracy, is a cooperative venture between free and equal persons for their mutual advantage. Individuals participate in it in order to implement their conceptions of the good life. Cooperation makes a better life possible for everyone by increasing the stock of what Rawls calls "primary goods" - things which it is rational to want whatever else you want, because they are required for any conception of a good life. Primary social goods include rights, liberties, powers, opportunities, income, wealth, and the social bases of self-respect. But society is also characterized by conflict, since people disagree not only about how its benefits and burdens should be distributed, but also about conceptions of the good. Principles of justice are used to evaluate the distributions of benefits and burdens and the institutions which effect them. Rawls's idea is to identify an acceptable conception of justice by asking what principles it would be reasonable for the members of society to agree to, which is to say, what principles would be fair.. (shrink)

In recent years, an increasingly assertive People’s Republic of China (PRC) leadership has sought to extend the PRC’s influence globally. To this end, it has developed diverse strategies ranging from soft power to more coercive means. The more visible strategies include the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese Dream, and ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy. At the soft power end of the spectrum, Chinese overseas students are at the nexus between two strategies of soft power – the Chinese diaspora and the internationalisation (...) of higher education. While there is an established literature analysing China’s soft power worldwide, relatively little has been done on the role of higher education, particularly where this concerns overseas Chinese students. The article will examine China’s use of overseas students to project its soft power. It then identifies the strategies that support this, viz. ideological and political education to prepare young people for this role and, once overseas, an appeal to a conception of the Chinese diaspora, as well as the organisations (e.g. embassies and student associations) that form potential channels to students and monitor and support them in their role. (shrink)

This article explores the emergence of leadership during implementation of a water saving initiative in the rural community surrounding Barren Box Swamp in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia. Qualitative data analysis indicated that the system elements affecting the type of leadership to emerge included the extent to which the groups were engaged in the process, the level of access to resources, and the level of investment in the outcomes of the project. Although these results reinforced key aspects of complex problem-solving (...) through collaboration, they demonstrated varying degrees and types of both engagement and leadership within the case community. Given the current finding that these varying elements can coincide within one system, this case suggests that each community’s characteristics, resources and context will determine the optimal combination of leadership style and level of collaboration needed to facilitate sustainable community development. (shrink)

In this paper, I challenge the argument that if we take health to be a meta-capability, we will be able to address the vulnerabilities that characterize human life. Instead, I argue that some vulnerabilities, like that attached to being a patient, can not be successfully addressed.

This book seeks to remedy the contempt for law prominent in socialist writings. While political thinkers on the left are indisputably concerned with justice, they dismiss those legal institutions which, in liberal capitalist societies, have ensured some minimum measure of justice in citizens' lives. Marxists in particular have tended to reduce law to a capitalist apparatus necessary to mediate conflict between egoistic wills or social classes. The book argues against this doctrine by showing that however ideal a society socialists envisage, (...) legal institutions would be necessary to fairly adjudicate conflict between private and public interests. Each chapter takes up an issue in liberal jurisprudence to see how it would fare in a socialist theory which takes a constructive approach to law. The rule of law, natural and legal rights, obligations, and the sources of law are among the subjects covered. The book concludes that a socialist concept of law would enrich, not only debates about the nature of socialism, but also debates about community and justice which preoccupy `mainstream' political theory and jurisprudence. (shrink)

The special concern we have for our future selves is often seen as making for a problem for psychological continuity theories, such as Derek Parfit's. On the basis of an account of the various kinds of procrastination, and of the ways imprudent procrastination involves harm to future selves, the paper argues that procrastinators often impose an uncompensated burden on their future selves, something that is best explained by a lack of concern for their future selves. Given this, the objections to (...) psychological continuity theories based on the idea of a special concern for our future selves are in serious trouble. (shrink)

In recent years educational policy on gender and achievement has concentrated on boys' underachievement, frequently comparing it with the academic success of girls. This has encouraged a perception of girls as the ?winners? of the educational stakes and assumes that they no longer experience the kinds of gender inequalities identified in earlier studies. However, trying to balance academic achievement with being seen as a ?proper girl? presents girls with difficult challenges, particularly in terms of being accepted and approved of by (...) classmates and securing the attention of teachers. This paper explores the views of a group of high achieving 12? to 13?year?old girls who indicate that being regarded as ?clever? continues to be negotiated within acceptable frameworks of femininity. (shrink)