Micro and small businesses contribute the majority of business activity in the most developed economies. They are typically embedded in local communities and therefore well placed to influence community wellbeing. While there has been considerable theoretical and empirical analysis of corporate citizenship and corporate social responsibility (CSR), the nature of micro-business community responsibility (mBCR) remains relatively under-explored. This article presents findings from an exploratory study of mBCR that examined the approaches, motivations and barriers of this phenomenon. Analysis of data from (...) 36 semi-structured interviews with micro-business owner-operators in the Australian city of Brisbane revealed three mBCR approaches, suggesting an observable mBCR typology. Each mBCR type was at least partly driven by enlightened self-interest (ESI). In addition to a pure ESI approach, findings revealed ESI combined with philanthropic approaches and ESI combined with social entrepreneurial approaches. The combination of doing business and doing good found amongst participants in this study suggests that many micro-business owner-operators are supporters of their local communities and, therefore, driven by more than profit. This study provides a fine-grained understanding of micro-business involvement in community wellbeing through a lens of responsible business behaviour. (shrink)

本書は昌益の思想方面を集中的に、しかもその全分野を対象にして、その特徴と内在論理性を明らかにするべく、しかも整理された認識として示すことを目標として纏められた。.

This study was conducted to determine how culture influences the ethical perception of managers. Most studies conducted so far have only stated similarities and differences in ethical perception between cultural or ethnic groups and little attention has been paid towards understanding how cultural values influence the ethnic groups' ethical perception. Moreover, most empirical research in this area has focused on moral judgement, moral decision making and action, with limited empirical work in the area of ethical perception. A total of 22 (...) interviews were conducted and the questionnaire survey yielded 272 managerial responses. Three implications were obtained based on the findings of the study. The first implication is that differences in ethical perception can exist when one culture attributes moral significance to something that another culture does not. The results of the study also suggest that similarities in ethical perception can occur when a situation is viewed as an accepted and institutionalised part of doing business. Finally, the findings of the study also show that the influence of culture on ethical perception varied according to the different types of scenarios. (shrink)

The target article by Locke & Bogin (L&B) focuses on the evolution of language as a communicative tool. They neglect, however, that from infancy onwards humans have the ability to go beyond successful behaviour and to reflect upon language (and other domains of knowledge) as a problem space in its own right. This ability is not found in other species and may well be what makes humans unique.

English summary: Until well into the 18th century, the concept of the soul played a major role in the scientific, religious, aesthetic and metaphysical discussion of humanity representing the highest level of existence. In modernity, this concept of the soul has lost its significance. It seems to have been replaced by terms such as subjectivity, personality and individuality. At the same time a symbolic added value which deifies clear description appears to have attached itself to the definition of the soul. (...) These developments and their interpretation are examined by the contributions in this collection. The volume includes contributions from Roderich Barth, Ulrich Barth, Jurgen Brunner, Brigitte Boothe, Jorg Dierken, Dirk Evers, Ferdinand Fellmann, Daniel Fulda, Johannes Hubner, Marco Ivaldo, Malte Dominik Kruger, Martin Kurthen, Rudolf Lang Thaler, Wolfgang Mack, Notger Slenzcka, Florian Steger and Anne Steinmeier. German description: Der Begriff der Seele hatte bis ins 18. Jahrhundert hinein eine prominente Stellung in naturwissenschaftlichen, religiosen, asthetischen und metaphysischen Erorterungen des Menschlichen als hochster Stufe des Lebendigen. Diese Stellung hat der Seelenbegriff in der Moderne eingebusst. Er scheint von Begriffen wie Subjektivitat, Personalitat und Individualitat abgelost worden zu sein. Gleichwohl scheint der Bezeichnung der Seele ein symbolischer Mehrwert anzuhaften, der sich allerdings einer klaren Fassung entzieht. Diesen Entwicklungen und ihren Deutungen gehen die Beitrage des Sammelbandes nach. Eine Leitfrage ist dabei: Steht die Rede von der Seele fur die prareflexive Selbstgegebenheit der Subjektivitat, wie sie sich vorrangig in der Leiberfahrung und (allenfalls?) nachrangig in der Wissenschaftsreflexion ausdruckt? (shrink)

Analyses Balthasar's idea of human freedom as a participation to Divine Freedom.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:For the Love of Nothing:Auden, Keats, and DeconstructionJo-Anne Cappeluti"Authors can be stupid enough, God knows, but they are not quite so stupid as a certain kind of critic seems to think. The kind of critic, I mean, to whom, when he condemns a work or a passage, the possibility never occurs that its author may have foreseen exactly what he is going to say"—W. H. AudenIDeconstruction by definition is (...) an exercise of the intellect's predilection to disprove and deny aesthetic experience. Deconstruction is in love with denying this "nothing," but is seemingly unaware of how attempting demystification entangles the intellect all the more with the imagination. And it is the imagination that creates aesthetic experience, the very entity critics deny even exists. This dynamic is especially true of deconstruction looking at the Romantic mode of poetry: the poetry of poets who serve as their own subject. Analyzing the internalized quests of these poets, deconstruction offers a drama of itself too much in love with demystifying aesthetic experience, attempting and always failing, intellectually, to reduce it to nothing.Poets who write in the Romantic mode of poetry are in love with this "nothing"; they present internalized quests filled with their acute awareness of the aesthetic—and highly indeterminate—nature of being human. At the core of this indeterminacy is the ongoing debate between imagination and intellect, the first interested in exploring what is there, in human consciousness, the second prone to demystifying it. Poets who write in this mode learn that such improvable yet actual aesthetic experience or "nothing" is germane to being human. Any attempt [End Page 345] to escape it intellectually will only lead back to the imagination that presents it.Poets who write in the Romantic mode of poetry are so familiar with the way in which this aesthetic nature of human existence involves the unresolved conflict between imagination and intellect that these poets present in their poetry a response to the criticism that denies it. John Keats and W. H. Auden are two poets who show this dynamic and who, not by coincidence, have a lot in common. Deconstruction, however, sees Auden and Keats—however separately—as poets who wake up at mid-career to the fallaciousness of the imagination and subsequently turn their talent to making nothing happen in their poetry: undermining its aesthetic nature. Keats's Endymion and Auden's "Caliban to the Audience" are frequently cited as prime examples of this demystification process. As I will argue, however, both of these poems deliberately dramatize the self-thwarting attempts of the intellect to dissect and dismiss what it claims is nothing.1Keats dramatizes this dynamic in Endymion, drawing attention to the way in which this "Brain-sick shepherd prince" claims—actually over-protests—to have loved "nothing" after his miraculous experience beneath the ocean with the strangely indeterminate creature, Glaucus (pp. 134, 206).2 Auden offers as well a detailed description of this dynamic in "Caliban to the Audience," the last section of The Sea and The Mirror, A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest. In this poem, the strangely indeterminate, begged question of existence, Caliban, reveals in great detail his audience's futile attempt to demystify what upsets them.My argument concludes with a discussion of the way in which these poems dramatize deconstruction's unintentional witness to the "real Word" of the imagination (CP, p. 444).3As poets who write in the Romantic mode, exploring what is there in their consciousness, Keats and Auden find a great indeterminacy inherent in their human nature: an unresolved problem that they explore—rather than try to solve. Auden, in fact, links himself to Keats, finding in Keats's idea of the chameleon poet his (Auden's) central idea of the poet as actor for the imagination. Like Keats, Auden takes the imagination quite seriously and fuses Keats's sense of the imagination with Coleridge's: observing that poetry records the poet's experiences in which the (Primary) imagination is drawn to certain "sacred" beings and events. In "Making, Knowing and Judging," Auden declares that the "impression made upon the imagination by any sacred being is of... (shrink)

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the scholium to proposition 49 of Part 2 of the Ethics, Spinoza addresses a number of prejudices that tend to obscure the essentially judgmental nature of ideas. One warning is issued against those who do not distinguish accurately between ideas and images, and, for this exact reason, fail to see that every idea, insofar as it is an idea, always involves an affirmation that something is the case. This paper shows that in order to properly understand Spinoza's remarks in (...) this passage, we must redirect attention to Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, and more particularly to the objections raised against them by Hobbes. Specifically, I argue for the identification of Hobbes and other likeminded “imagists” as Spinoza's main targets, and not, as is often assumed, Descartes himself or Cartesians in general. My identification not only resolves interpretative confusion surrounding this passage, but it also confirms Spinoza's commitment to a key rationalist assumption: the existence of a mind that can grasp or exhibit natures by clear and distinct perceptions. While both adequate and inadequate ideas are necessitated beliefs or judgments in which we assent to something, virtue consists in being propelled by the intellect. (shrink)

Nietzsche and Modern Times: A study of Bacon, Descartes and Nietzsche. Laurence Lampert. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Pp. xii + 475. 35.00 Nietzsche and Metaphysics. Peter Poellner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. xi + 320.

Although argumentation plays an essential role in our lives, there is no integrated area of research on the psychology of argumentation. Instead research on argumentation is conducted in a number of separate research communities that are spread across disciplines and have only limited interaction. With a view to bridging these different strands, we first distinguish between three meanings of the word ?argument?: argument as a reason, argument as a structured sequence of reasons and claims, and argument as a social exchange. (...) All three meanings are integral to a complete understanding of human reasoning and cognition. Cognitive psychological research on argumentation has focused mostly on the first and second of these meanings, so we present perspectives on argumentation from outside of cognitive psychology, which focus on the second and third. Specifically, we give anoverview of the methods, goals, and disciplinary backgrounds of research on the production, the analysis, and the evaluation of arguments. Finally, inintroducing the experimental studies included in this special issue, which were conducted by researchers from a range of theoretical backgrounds, weunderline the breadth of argumentation research as well as stress opportunities for mutual awareness and integration. (shrink)

How should historians speak truth to power--and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history--especially long-term history--so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which gave rise to our conflicted present? The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society. Leading historians David Armitage and Jo Guldi identify a recent shift back to longer-term (...) narratives, following many decades of increasing specialization, which they argue is vital for the future of historical scholarship and how it is communicated. This provocative and thoughtful book makes an important intervention in the debate about the role of history and the humanities in a digital age. It will provoke discussion among policymakers, activists and entrepreneurs as well as ordinary listeners, viewers, readers, students and teachers. (shrink)

A presente comunicação é o resultado de uma pesquisa bibliográfica e das constatações do autor derivadas da sua experiência no processo de ensino e aprendizagem, mormente na disciplina de Didáctica de Física. Tomando como pressuposto de que a Didáctica de Física ou a Prática de Ensino de Física, ocupa um papel preponderante no currículo de Formação do corpo discente e docente na Universidade Pedagógica, o autor trás à tona uma discussão teórica com vários autores que de algum tempo à esta (...) parte se têm debruçado sobre o assunto. Nesta discussão, o autor se apegou no seguinte tripé: a) A dicotomia ensino e aprendizagem em Física; b) A prática de ensino de Física: realidades e desafios rumo à novos paradigmas didáctico – epistemológicos e c) Algumas reflexões pessoais do autor, arraigadas na sua experiência profissional e não só. O desdobramento deste tripé, serviu para cimentar a sua convicção, antes tida como premissa, segundo a qual, o ensino de Física, sobretudo em se tratando de cursos universitários, a actividade experimental precisa ter em conta à aspectos como a descrição das aulas, o modo como são organizadas, a valorização das actividades experimentais desenvolvidas em pequenos grupos, bem como a abordagem que focaliza a demonstração de conceitos e fenómenos discutidos teoricamente. E ainda, o direccionamento das actividades para favorecer elementos didácticos como o desenvolvimento de habilidades, observação e interpretação, entre outros. Para que estes pressupostos ganhem eco na nossa plataforma curricular, é necessário que a formação de professores de Física, dê maior importância aos contornos ecológicos, sociais e económicos que bordejam o espaço educacional. A percepção teórica que isso dá ao educador, aglutinado ao saber teórico-prático deste, da realidade que circunda a escola, é a que dá ao educador, premissas e ferramentas para poder equacionar e apropriar-se com eficácia dos ambientes sócio-culturais existentes neste espaço ecológico. (shrink)

John Keats’s subject in Endymion is the imagination operating on the failed reader: the neutral or adolescent intellect that ultimately denies the transcendence it experiences; failing to mature, willfully remaining adolescent. Keats’s presentation of Endymion as “brain-sick” in this respect is thus a radical reinvention of the perpetually youthful Endymion in the Greek myth. Keats is keenly aware, moreover, of the built-in failure of his poem, a failure that remains true today; he cannot make readers recognize Endymion’s adolescent intellect as (...) adolescent, much less recognize it as their own failed thinking. (shrink)

This paper gives an analysis of the Chinese distributivity marker dou 'all', which can occur not only with definite plural NPs but also with NPs whose determiner is a quantifier word such as mei 'every' or dabufen-de 'most'. Besides normal distributive predicates, it can also occur with certain types of collective predicates. The difficulties of giving a compositional interpretation to constructions of these kinds are discussed in detail. I show that we can solve those difficulties if we treat dou as (...) a generalized distributivity marker in the sense of Schwarzschild (1991, 1996), which distributes over the members of a plurality cover. Apart from the above topic, which is more narrowly a semantics topic, this paper also discusses some syntax-semantics interface issues related to the distribution of dou's associates. (shrink)

This book explores solving the problem of complexity for science in the 21st century.