This book is not a list or an overview of various theories of ethics. Nor is it a didactic manual for specific teaching units on moral education aimed at some group based on age or a particular theme (although some educational frameworks will be proposed). As the title suggests, the book intends to seek the starting points or foundations without which no moral education would be possible. The goal is to formulate and tackle the key questions that precede all moral (...) education. What makes ""good vs. evil"" language possible and meaningful? Can virtue be taught and learned? What makes our actions good? What is the condition of human nature? Are we naturally good, or evil? What constitutes an educator's right to morally influence anyone else (not just a child)? What is the goal of moral education? What does a morally educated person look like? And how can we ensure the coveted moral result? Or--in the words of Jan Amos Comenius, the ""teacher of nations""--how to educate a person to not only know what is good, but also to want what is good, and to do what is good ""even when no one is looking?"" ""I wish I would have had Jan Habl's concise, passionate, and eminently readable book available as a text for my ethics courses during my thirty-six years of teaching at colleges and universities in Canada. Habl not only raises the alarm about a moral crisis in Western societies today, but also provides a careful treatment of some oft-neglected presuppositions of moral education. The concluding chapter introduces us to Jan Amos Comenius, a seventeenth century Czech philosopher, theologian, and pedagogue, from whom we have much to learn about a better approach to moral education."" --Elmer Thiessen, Emmanuel Bible College ""With a sound and broad grasp of ethical (moral) theorists, Jan Habl incisively critiques the fallacies of popular theories, rendering them ineffectual if not dangerous. Then, drawing on Czech educator/philosopher Comenious, he persuasively advances a theistic proposal for nurturing moral persons and communities. Immensely timely, never more needed, a rich, compelling read for our contemporary societies if we wish for a civil and peaceful existence for ourselves and future generations. Highly recommended."" --Duane H. Elmer, Trinity International University ""You have in your hands a text by someone I take to be one of the very serious young moral philosophers of our time. The profundity of his analysis of the need for moral education reminds me of the style of analysis of one of the great moral philosophers of the final decades of the twentieth century, Alasdair MacIntyre."" --Thomas K. Johnson, World Evangelical Alliance Jan Habl is a professor of pedagogy at universities in Hradec Kralove and Usti nad Labem (Czech Republic). He has taught systematic theology and ethics at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Prague. He has authored a number of books and studies in the areas of philosophy of education, ethics, and pedagogy, including On Being Human(e) (2016); Teaching and Learning Through Story, Comenius' Labyrinth and the Educational Potential of Narrative Allegory (2014). (shrink)

There is a difference between that which is and that which is to be. Anthropologically: there is a way I am, and the way I am to be, or not to be. How are we to explain this? This book presents the argument that human nature is both complex and complicated in at least two specific ways--ontologically and ethically. In our being we are indisputably good, dignified, worthy, important, or even noble. But in our morality we are ambivalent--capable of both (...) good and evil, the humane and the inhumane. In his paramount work Jan Amos Comenius expresses the goal of his lifelong endeavor: "to help keep man from falling into a non-man" (Pampaedia). If human beings are to become what they ought to be, they need to be educated towards humanity, says Comenius. But the fundamental question is, what is a human being? And what ought one to be? "Salt ought to be salty. A river ought to be clear. A knife ought to be sharp. But what ought a person to be?" What is the essence of our humanity? And how can that be cultivated or educated? This book presents Comenius's answers to these questions. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to explore the possibilities and limits of Comenius's greatest and most important work, General Consultation Concerning Restoration of Human Affairs. The humanity of people is not quite right, but not quite lost--that is the foundational anthropological assumption of the Consultation. How does Comenius understand humanity? What are human affairs? What's wrong with them? And the most important question: Can they be somehow corrected, improved, or restored?

This article contributes to carework scholarship by examining the nexus of gender, class, and race in long-term care facilities. We draw out a family ideology at work that promotes good care of residents and thus benefits nursing homes. We also found that careworkers value fictive kin relationships with residents, yet we uncover how the family model may be used to exploit these low-income careworkers. Reflecting a subordinate and racialized version of being “part of the family,” we call for an ethic (...) of reciprocity and for concrete change toward valuing equally the humanity of those who need and those who give care. (shrink)

This anthology in epistemology is a collection of essays and excerpts from seminal texts on ways of knowing in mathematics, the natural and social sciences and the liberal and fine arts and communication.

In addition to the aim of mapping and sequencing one human's genome, the Human Genome Project also intends to characterise the genetic diversity of the world's peoples. The Human Genome Diversity Project raises political, economic and ethical issues. These intersect clearly when the genomes under study are those of indigenous peoples who are already subject to serious economic, legal and/or social disadvantage and discrimination. The fact that some individuals associated with the project have made dismissive comments about indigenous peoples has (...) confused rather than illuminated the deeper issues involved, as well as causing much antagonism among indigenous peoples. There are more serious ethical issues raised by the project for all geneticists, including those who are sympathetic to the problems of indigenous peoples. With particular attention to the history and attitudes of Australian indigenous peoples, we argue that the Human Genome Diversity Project can only proceed if those who further its objectives simultaneously: respect the cultural beliefs of indigenous peoples; publicly support the efforts of indigenous peoples to achieve respect and equality; express respect by a rigorous understanding of the meaning of equitable negotiation of consent, and ensure that both immediate and long term economic benefits from the research flow back to the groups taking part. (shrink)

The continuing viability of the free‐radical theory of ageing has been questioned following apparently incompatible recent results. We show by modelling positional effects of the generation and primary targets of reactive oxygen species that many of the apparently negative results are likely to be misleading. We conclude that there is instead a need to look more closely at the mechanisms by which free radicals contribute to age‐related dysfunction in living systems. There also needs to be deeper understanding of the dynamics (...) of accumulation and removal of the various kinds of molecular damage, in particular mtDNA mutations. Finally, the expectation that free‐radical damage on its own might cause ageing needs to be relinquished in favour of the recognition that the free‐radical theory is just one of the multiple mechanisms driving the ageing process. (shrink)

Changes in immigration policy and legislation have the power to shape and alter the gendering of migration in significant ways, and can have a dramatic effect on the lives and relationships of the men, women and families involved. In this paper, we examine the provisions of the new Immigration Act introduced in South Africa in 2002. The Act, which replaces the outdated Aliens Control Act of 1991, gives considerable cause for concern on gender grounds. Foremost, the Act entrenches a system (...) of male-dominated regional labour migration that has its origins in the 19th-century discovery of gold and diamonds. The male bias in the work permit and other employment-based categories along with the limits to family reunification for those entering for work are likely in effect to discriminate against women to a greater extent than men. While similar gender concerns are common to most immigration policy regimes around the world, the particular circumstances of the South African case, where both skilled and unskilled migration streams are heavily male-dominated, makes them especially acute here. This paper contextualizes migration regimes in South Africa and examines in detail the likely implications of the new Immigration Act. (shrink)

In the short essay on theory and practice, Kant declares that the social contract differs from all other types of contracts in that agreement to its is obligatory and may be exacted through the use of force. In this paper, I examine Kant's justification of the moral necessity of civil society. Kant locates the ground of our obligation to enter into a civil union in the necessity of property for action and civil society as the necessary condition of the institution (...) of property. It is my contention that the idea of the social contract is central to this project in that it joins together both moral autonomy and political authority in a conceptual unity that establishes the legitimacy of civil society, or the juridical condition as the collective dimension of autonomy. (shrink)

With this concise and tightly constructed account of Kant’s views on social welfare, Alexander Kaufman has filled a gap in the growing literature on Kant’s political philosophy. Kaufman’s purpose is two-fold: first, to explicate the philosophical basis of Kant’s views of social welfare; and second, to reconstruct Kant’s views on political judgment in order to link his abstract philosophical ideas to public policy.

With this concise and tightly constructed account of Kant’s views on social welfare, Alexander Kaufman has filled a gap in the growing literature on Kant’s political philosophy. Kaufman’s purpose is two-fold: first, to explicate the philosophical basis of Kant’s views of social welfare; and second, to reconstruct Kant’s views on political judgment in order to link his abstract philosophical ideas to public policy.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a legal icon. In more than four decades as a lawyer, professor, appellate judge, and Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Ginsburg influenced the law and society in real and permanent ways. This book chronicles and evaluates the remarkable achievements Ruth Bader Ginsburg made over the last half-century. Including chapters written by prominent court-watchers and leading scholars from law, political science, and history, the book offers diverse perspectives on an array of doctrinal areas and different (...) periods in Ginsburg's career. Together, these perspectives document the impressive legacy of one of the most important figures in modern law. This updated second edition features a new foreword from Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and a new introduction from the editor Scott Dodson. (shrink)

Kevin Murphy’s essay “Christians and the New Food Movement” (Autumn 2011) rightly warns about introducing non-Christian ideas associated with certain environmental movements into church practices. However, the essay embraces several errors that ultimately conflict with the Catholic faith. Catholic social doctrine, rooted in the universality of Christ’s salvific act, requires viewing food, agriculture, and the economy through a moral lens. A refusal to engage in such issues because they might bring the Church into contact with heterodoxy leads to a form (...) of protectionism that embraces a reductionist view of creation and, ultimately, the human person. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.2 (Summer 2012): 217–226. (shrink)

This essay examines the contested grounds of authorization for one important orientalist project in India during the nineteenth century scientificphilological practice. Indian Sanskrit scholars, however, rather than accepting such translations of the Veda, and the cultural characterizations they contained, instead engaged critically with them, reproducing a distinctive vision of Indian civilization through their own translations into English. Moreover, by examining the diverse ways in which key concepts, such as the of a translation, were negotiated by Europeans and Indians, this essay (...) also suggests that intellectual histories of the colonial encounter in South Asia should move beyond debates about colonial knowledge to more explicitly examine the contexts of knowledgeable practices. (shrink)

A coordinate-free formulation is established for (semi) classical particle-field interactions. The exterior language of spacetime chains and De-Rham currents enables the description to include extended strings and membranes besides point particles. Treating physical fields in terms of sections of particular bundles, a unified account of interactions is presented in terms of an intrinsic action principle on a bundle of jets over spacetime. The theory is illustrated by considering the specific model of point particles with intrinsic spin covariantly coupled to theU(1) (...) andSL(2, C) connections describing the electromagnetic and gravitational fields, respectively. The notion of dual spin is examined in this context and coupled equations for this particle-field system are explicitly derived in a local chart. Attention is drawn to the global implications of the theory. (shrink)