Like the French revolutionaries, Kant defended individual rights and a republican constitution. That he nonetheless rejected a right of revolution has puzzled scholars. In this article I give an overview of Kant’s rejection of a right of revolution, compare it to the German intellectual context, and use it to explain Kant’s view of the events in France. In Kant’s nuanced account of the revolution’s two central phases, he refined a distinction between legitimate political transition and lawless popular rebellion.

Articulating the possible limits or shortcomings of the international human rights movement, David Kennedy highlights the fact that Human Rights discourses distract attention away from the economic realm and towards a re-entrenchment of the individual's relationship with the state and the negotiation of political and procedural rights. Even in a country like Malaysia that is credited as an economic and development miracle, the human rights discourse has distracted attention away from the underlying problems of ethnic and economic stratification and directed (...) energy and resources towards the realization of personal and political "Rights" that will not be capable of being exercised in a meaningful way without economic redistribution. Furthermore, the Human Rights discourse has been transplanted in the context of a religious identity debate, which has both shaped and limited its discursive boundaries, as well as its ability to articulate and realize demands. The combination of the limitations of Human Rights discourse with its operation within the religious identity debate has meant that the liberal reformers in Malaysia have been severely limited in their ability to implement meaningful changes. Consideration of the women's rights movement in Malaysia aptly demonstrates that way that rights discourses have compromised the success of liberal reformers. (shrink)

The study aims to ascertain how different levels of society have been influenced by the impact of pandemics over the last many years. The study also determines the societal implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. The integrative literature survey method is adopted to extract the secondary data pertinent to the socio-economic effect of pandemics and COVID-19 on society. Primary data is collected to diagnose the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown on employees (N = 210) working in the Indian organized (...) sector. Findings of the study suggest that pandemics have been a cause of economic slowdown measured with a fall in gross domestic product (GDP) at the macro level. The reduced level of economic activity is found to be negatively related to an individual socio-economic status building their psychological distress. The descriptive analysis of the data reveals that although employees have managed their jobs and finances during COVID-19, they have experienced stress in their lives due to the pandemic. The study assimilates the pandemic effect using inductive reasoning to develop a COVID quadrilateral conceptual framework. (shrink)

This paper argues that, although no resistance or revolution is permitted in the Kantian state, very tyrannical regimes must not be obeyed because they do not qualify as states. The essay shows how a state ceases to be a state, argues that persons have a moral responsibility to judge about it and defends the compatibility of this with Kantian authority. The reconstructed Kantian view has implications for how we conceive authority and obligation. It calls for a morally demanding definition of (...) the state and asserts that the primary personal responsibility is not to evaluate the morality of every single law but to evaluate the moral standing of the polity.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Kant, the State, and RevolutionVolume 18, Issue 1Reidar Maliks DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000271Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Kant, the State, and RevolutionVolume 18, Issue 1Reidar Maliks DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000271Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Kant, the State, and RevolutionVolume 18, Issue 1Reidar Maliks DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000271Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

For much of the past half century, politicians and scientists have largely spoken with a single voice on the issue of race. The experience of Nazism and the Holocaust made racial science politically unacceptable. It also shaped the scientific consensus that race was a social myth, not a biological reality. Today, however, that scientific consensus is beginning to crack.

V tomto článku se zabývám konceptem SI (superinteligence) a s ní spojeným problémem kontroly. Podle určité skupiny teoretiků umělé inteligence stojíme na prahu události, která může radikálně změnit povahu technologického pokroku a lidské společnosti obecně. Touto událostí má být takzvaná technologická singularita, která je často spojována se vznikem první větší než lidské inteligence. Lidé jako Nick Bostrom varují před nebezpečím, které pro nás vznik SI znamená a upozorňují, že musíme co nejdříve najít metody kontroly této inteligence. Podle Bostroma a dalších (...) nebezpečí SI vyplývá z její povahy. Já na jedné straně posuzuji, jak SI může vzniknout, a na druhé straně soudím smysluplnost problému kontroly. Vznik SI vyplývá ze vzniku umělé inteligence. Proto soustřeďuji podstatnou část textu argumentům pro její vznik. Ukazují jak se Bostrom a další nechávají unést jedním problematickým argumentem. Dále podrobuji jejich pozici klasické kritice umělé inteligence. Prezentuji, jak stále lpí na problematických domněnkách svých předchůdců. Zejména soustřeďuji svoji kritiku na tvrzení, že SI bude mít jeden konečný cíl, který bude interpretovat. Toto tvrzení označuji jako antitetické, a to představě, že SI bude obecnou inteligencí. V závěru z mojí argumentace vyvozuji, že problém kontroly zaměňuje dva jiné různé problémy „kontroly.“. (shrink)

Observation and experiment as categories for analysing scientific practice have a long pedigree in writings on science. There has, however, been little attempt to delineate observation and experiment with respect to analysing scientific practice; in particular, scientific experimentation, in a systematic manner. Someone who has presented a systematic account of observation and experiment as categories for analysing scientific experimentation is Ian Hacking. In this paper, I present a detailed analysis of Hacking’s observation versus experiment account. Using a range of cases (...) from various fields of scientific enquiry, I argue that the observation versus experiment account is not an adequate framework for delineating scientific experimentation in a systematic manner. (shrink)

With the increasing interest in Islam and evolution, some Islamic thinkers have vehemently rejected evolution, while others have eagerly embraced it. However, those seeking to embrace evolution sometimes err in their interpretation of historical writings. Indeed, there are texts written by famous historical scholars of Islam who seem to suggest that humans have evolved from lower forms of species. These include Ibn Khaldūn, Jalāl ad‐Dīn Rūmī, al‐Jāhiz, and The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā). Although this may be true, such (...) readings are a mistaken interpretation of the aforementioned authors who are actually referring to some form of the scalae naturae (the Great Chain of Being). This reference to the Great Chain of Being is unknown to some contemporary readers who mistakenly believe these writers to be discussing an evolutionary or a proto‐evolutionary theory. This article demonstrates how and why these historical records do not actually represent any notion of evolution as it is currently understood, in the hope of avoiding any further erroneous claims that seem to be proliferating among modern thinkers. (shrink)

_Misapprehensions of culture and religion are used for the early marriages of women in Pakistan, which generates few significant challenges for women to pursue their higher education. The present study identifies such challenges for married women in higher education. These challenges are relevant to women’s post-marriage lifespan in rural Pakistan. Building upon Fredrickson’s (2001) and Hobfoll’s (2001) theories focused on post marriages issues, the study has developed open-ended questions for collecting in-depth information. Therefore, 43 in-depth interviews with married women were (...) conducted and through qualitative data analysis using NVIVO software, the study has highlighted that early marriages of girls have become a cultural norm, and education priorities of the girls are insignificant for parents to decide the marriage date. Married women pursuing education at marriage do not get any support from husbands and in-laws as the patriarchal norms prohibit women from stepping out from home. In these circumstances, women may get subject to the victim of many unlawful practices, including intimate partner violence (IPV). Thus, the present study findings imply that married women's participation in higher education is negligible due to weak legislation on women’s rights and strong illegitimate tribal practices._. (shrink)

When Kant in 1793 rejected a right of revolution, he was immediately criticized by a group of radical followers who argued that he had betrayed his own principles of justice. Jakob, Erhard, Fichte, Bergk and Schlegel proceeded to defend a right of resistance and revolution based on what they took to be his true principles. I argue that we must understand Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, which came in 1797, partly as a response to these radical democratic writings. Exploring this forgotten (...) controversy reveals that Kant did not betray his own principles when he denied a right of revolution, because he did not mean that persons have an unconditional duty to obey. This becomes clear when we read the final developments of Kant's thinking on individual liberty and republican government in light of the radical critique. (shrink)

This article argues against the depiction of Ibn Khaldūn as someone whose preoccupation and credulity regarding mysticism or the occult diminish the rationalism and reformism of his thought, rendering it irrelevant to our concerns today. Instead, it argues that he consistently tries to steer his readers away from such pursuits by exposing them as fake when possible, or—in cases where their reality is attested to by unimpeachable religious sources—by highlighting the dangers they pose to both religion and state.

Although the Mukhtasar Siyasat al-Hurub has attained iconic status in the Islamic military canon, it has never received a full-length analysis. Almost all extant references, moreover, focus on its technical aspects rather than its political subtext. That subtext has a twofold purpose. First, to valorize reason by emphasizing the centrality of deliberation in jihad. Second, to ensure that such valorization nevertheless does not lose sight of (a) the uncertainties of war, which militate against replacing faith in supernatural forces with an (...) equally unwarranted faith in science; or (b) the existence of evil in the world, which precludes any hope of perpetual peace. As such, the Mukhtasar articulates a distinctive Islamic approach that diverges both from a more optimistic Western tradition extending from early Christianity to the Enlightenment, and from an alternative-- but currently resurgent-- Islamic outlook on the proper scope and conduct of jihad. (shrink)

With a wealth of detail, this book traces the acceptance and rejection of Soren Kierkegaard's thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Engaging the reader with biographical sketches of Kierkegaard and his contemporaries, Habib Malik presents a fascinating historical narrative of the early reception of Kierkegaard's thought. At the center of this story is an exploration of how Kierkegaard's ideas moved from the relative obscurity of Copenhagen at the time of his death in 1855 to the center (...) of European intellectual culture in the mid-1920s. Receiving Soren Kierkegaard is the first serious attempt to chronicle the early "lost years" of Kierkegaard's intellectual legacy. It analyzes Kierkegaard's profound impact on the lives and thought of such figures as Orsted, Ibsen, Jacobsen, Brandes, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Unamuno, Joyce, Rilke, Kafka, Lukacs, and Kassner. (shrink)

This study reviews and synthesizes the contemporary business literature that focuses on the role of corporate social responsibility to enhance firm value. The main objective of this review is to proffer a precise understanding of what has already been investigated and the findings of those investigations regarding the value-enhancing capabilities of CSR for public firms. In addition, this review identifies gaps in the existing literature, evaluates inconsistent findings, discusses possible data sources for empirical researchers, and provides direction for exploring other (...) promising avenues in future studies. The thrust of the CSR literature largely acknowledges the value-enhancing capabilities of firms’ social and environmental activities. However, the predominance of inconsistent theoretical grounds in major CSR-benefits-related areas suggests that there is ample room for future research to contribute to the extant literature. Anecdotal evidence, the prevalence of theoretical arguments, and the availability of large cross-sectional firm-level data suggest that future research will enrich the literature by investigating the real insights behind several unanswered questions, by establishing implicit understandings regarding recognized findings, and by developing new theories in this emerging field. (shrink)

An introduction to the political philosophy of Kant, exploring how he developed his views in a context shaped by controversies following the French revolution. It provides new information on his followers and critics as they engaged in high stakes political debates on freedom's relation to the state at this key turning point in history.

Despite the vast scholarship on Ibn Khaldun, little attention has been devoted to his views on war - views of considerable contemporary significance because he remains one of the few authoritative figures across a broad swath of the Islamic political spectrum. The first part of this article identifies jihad as a crucial element of a broader imperative for Ibn Khaldun: establishing empires of sufficient size, diversity and cosmopolitanism to sustain the kind of civilization he views as necessary for human excellence. (...) The second part of the article demonstrates that for Ibn Khaldun the good military commander, like the good religious guide, is a model for the good or artful statesman in general. In the process, Ibn Khaldun's study of war and empire emerges as one of the most innovative articulations of Realpolitik in Islamic political thought. (shrink)

The idea of the subject as a construct, of various external influences, was not new to the cultural and literary circles in the 1980s when DeLillo published White Noise. In the second half of the twentieth century, post-structuralist and postmodern theories unsettled the established ideas of the humanist tradition like the concept of the subject. The idea that the subject is constituted by external factors posed a challenge to the modernist notion of the subject as authentic and independent consciousness. Influenced (...) by post-structuralist and postmodern theories, novelists in post-war America, especially during and after the 1980s, portrayed their protagonists (the subjects) as textual constructs rather than authentic heroic figures we often find in modernists’ works of art. DeLillo engages with technological developments and sociocultural changes in post-war America and explores how such developments/changes influence an individual’s subjectivity. Critics have described Jack Gladney, the protagonist of White Noise, as a late-modernist displaced to negotiate the postmodern landscape. This study, which is purely of scholarly interest, attempts to show how Gladney vacillates between the notions of modernist authentic subject and the de-centred postmodern subject created textually. This article also attempts to explore how DeLillo’s fiction engages with the idea of the subject during the 1980s. (shrink)

This article reviews al‐Ghazālī's conception of Divine Command Theory (DCT) in light of contemporary philosophical developments. There are two well‐known objections against DCT. These include the problem of arbitrariness (PoA), which states that God randomly chose our moral framework for no reason given His capability to choose any moral commands; and the problem of God's goodness (PoGG), which questions God's goodness if morality could be other than what it is. Modern defenders of DCT have attempted to counter these objections through (...) various strategies. This article juxtaposes al‐Ghazālī's interpretation of DCT with modern strategies to illustrate how these two issues are untroubling concerns in al‐Ghazālī's framework. In doing so, it highlights where and how they differ in their approaches. Additionally, it critiques interpretations suggested by some contemporary thinkers who suggest that al‐Ghazālī may not be a strict proponent of DCT. (shrink)

This article proposes that Ranciere offers an accurate account of contemporary art’s self-understanding of its politicality, explaining his widespread appreciation and influence by the sector. For this reason the critique of Ranciere’s notion of politics and the demonstration of its deliberate disavowal of specific political determination allow for a systemic argument against contemporary art’s critical ambitions as in any way politically adequate.

A received criticism of information is that it is an instrumentalization of knowledge. This article questions the conditions for such a critique. Examining developmental systems theory, biology and social sciences, it argues that information is a situated event; that it is intrinsic to the development and structuring of mnemic organization at a number of levels; and that such developmental systems are epigenetically constituted. This concept of information leads to: a critique of the statistical-quantitative determination of information that is put forward (...) as its mathematical theorization; a review of characterizations of ‘information societies’; and comprehending instrumentalization as a variant of the event of information at the specific level of the constitution of the human understood as an anthropotechnical complex. (shrink)

Tacit knowing as a concept and legitimate topic of scholarship came up in philosophical research in the second half of the 20th century in the form of some influential works by Michael Polanyi (although similar concepts had been discussed before). Systematic epistemological studies on the topic are still scarce, however. In this article, I support the thesis that tacit knowing pervades all our common major divisions of knowledge and that it therefore must not be neglected in epistemological research. By this (...) approach I am simultaneously giving a systematic back-up for Polanyi's claim that the tacit component is found in all knowledge. (shrink)

This article intends to review William Dembski's recent monograph entitledBeing as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information, in which he establishes an entire information-centric metaphysics. This viewpoint is compared with al-Ghazālī’s perspective, a Muslim philosophical theologian from the Medieval period. It is concluded that what Dembski defines as information, which for him is the ontological basis of the natural world, seems remarkably close to al-Ghazālī’s notion of God's will and omnipotence. This article is an explorative comparison of their metaphysical frameworks that (...) are discussed in light of modern scientific developments, highlighting their differences and similarities. (shrink)

To Kant, the French revolution's central events were the transfer of sovereignty to the people in 1789 and the trial and execution of the monarch in 1792-1793. Through a contextual study, this Element argues that while both events manifested the principle of popular sovereignty, the first did so in lawful ways, whereas the latter was a perversion of the principle. Kant was convinced that historical examples can help us understand political philosophy, and this Element seeks to show this in practice.

Ethical decision making in medicine has recently seen calls to move towards less prescriptive- based approaches that consider the particularities of each case. The main alternative call from the literature is for better understanding of phronesis concepts applied to decision making. A well-cited phronesis-based approach is Kaldjian’s five-stage theoretical framework: goals, concrete circumstances, virtues, deliberation and motivation to act. We build on Kaldjian’s theory after using his framework to analyse data collected from a three-year empirical study of phronesis and the (...) medical community. The data are a set of narratives collected in response to asking a medical community what making ethically wise decisions means to them. We found that Kaldjian’s five concepts are present in the accounts to some extent but that one of the elements, motivation, is constructed as playing a different, though still crucial role. Rather than being an end-stage of the process as Kaldjian’s framework suggests, motivation was constructed as initiating the process and maintaining the momentum of taking a phronesis-based approach. The implications for medical ethics decision-making education are significant as motivation itself is a highly complex concept. We therefore theorise that motivation is required for leading in, continuing and completing the actions of the ethical decision taken. Appreciating the central importance of motivation through the whole of Kaldjian’s framework has implications for cultivating the virtues of phronesis and courage to take the right course of action. (shrink)

Fractal dynamics is a unique, systems-based approach of looking at and thinking about organizations. In this view, the organization is viewed as part of a pervasive organizational fractal. Many astounding properties such as fractal completion, fractal influence and fractal universality emerge in fractal space. These offer new insight into the fundamental dynamics animating all organizations. Routine management tasks such as strategy formulation, cost cutting, process redesign, product formulation, management of change and leadership development can be conducted anew with powerful and (...) innovative insights, unavailable when management is approached traditionally through a linear and sequential thinking approach. This article focuses primarily on the rationale for employing fractal dynamics, and on the search for the pervasive organizational fractal that animates all organizations. A brief example of how fractal dynamics offers insights in the case of management of change is also provided. (shrink)

The economic growth in India is quite visible through infrastructural and industrial growth in metros but the same is overshadowed by the poor plight of beggars in these cities. This article addresses the living conditions of the beggars and their awareness about the various government policies. The study gives an insight into the economic status of beggars and answers why people go for begging. The solution calls for a comprehensive programme and reorientation of the existing programmes. We often read and (...) hear of aids that are directed towards the upliftment of the beggars; and the article aims to check if these aids have in any way improved their plight. Many NGOs, non-profit private organizations and corporations are helping disadvantaged populace from various segments. But this segment has not received the requisite assistance and attention and this article examines the responsibility of corporations in this concern. (shrink)

Successful business transformation has proven to be a complex issue. This paper proposes an ap proach to business transformation based on the emulation of systems in nature that have survived through masterful adaptation. Such systems, complex adaptive systems, are those which are able to adapt to a broad range of situations. This paper proposes an approach to understanding the steps that lead to the existence of a masterful complex adaptive system, through observation of different sets of dynamics that seem to (...) characterize different types of organizations. In this manner, a system is pro posed by which business organizations may progressively transform themselves to become completely adaptable, and hence, masterful complex adaptive systems. (shrink)

Papers presented at the Seminar on Ethics and Aesthetics in Indian Literary Practices, held at Udaipur in Rajasthan, India in 2009; organized by Department of English, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, India.

This paper examines conflicts of rights and competing interests in the context of the British equalities framework. The expansion of the grounds of European Union and domestic discrimination law beyond the traditional categories of race and sex to also include disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or belief and age has made this an important issue. In addition, the increasing recognition of ‘equality’ and ‘non-discrimination’ as important rights raises the spectre of conflict with other human rights such as the right (...) to freedom of expression. This is potentially a vast area for analysis. This paper is a selective treatment of some of the main issues. It sets out these issues and some general principles for reform as a first step in developing a principled approach to conflicts in equality law and policy. (shrink)