South Africa is a complex society filled with diversity of many kinds. Because of the enormous and profound changes of the last 20 years of democracy, this can be perceived as a society in social identity crisis which is increasingly spilling over into many areas of life. Churches have also gone through a process of reformulating their identity and have restructured theological education for all its members resulting in growing multicultural student bodies. These new student constituencies reflect a wide spectrum (...) of cultural backgrounds, personal histories and theological commitments, and represent diversity in race, ethnicity, culture, class, gender, age, language and sexual orientation. These issues of diversity are theologically complicated and contested as they are attached to religious dogma. Diversity exists as a threat and promise, problem and possibility. Using current conceptualisations of diversity in South African Higher Education this article will seek to understand the notion of diversity and difference and the possibility of developing transformative remedies within the theological education curriculum. (shrink)

In the absence of effective judicial remediation mechanisms after business-related human rights violations, companies themselves are expected to establish remediation procedures for affected victims and communities. This is a challenge for both companies and victims since comprehensive company-based grievance mechanisms are currently missing. In this paper, we explore how companies can provide effective remediation after human rights violations. Accordingly, we critically assess two different approaches to conflict resolution, alternative dispute resolution and restorative justice, for their potential to provide dialogue-based, non-judicial (...) remediation. We argue that remedy through agreement-driven ADR mechanisms risks marginalizing the interests and concerns of victims and affected community members, particularly in weak institutional contexts. Hence, we develop a dialogue-driven framework for corporate remediation of human rights violations grounded on RJ principles. This restorative framework provides a comprehensive CGM that focuses on the harms and needs of victims and aims at restoring justice through restorative dialogue. Based on a prompt discovery and a thorough investigation of the grievance, companies should design and prepare the remediation process together with victims, offenders and affected community members. Through restorative dialogue with the affected parties about the circumstances and impacts of the wrongdoing, companies can repair the harm, regain legitimacy amongst stakeholders as well as transform their business practices to avoid future human rights violations. (shrink)

This paper examines the implications of digital remediation which translates and transforms an older text, endowing it with new life, in relation to the project #LauraSpeaks, a translation and remediation of Pellegra Bongiovanni’s Risposte di Madonna Laura alle rime di Messer Francesco Petrarca, in nome della medesima. Divided into three different sections, it describes the steps involved in this project, from the discovery of the original text and the analysis of Bongiovanni’s contribution within the realm of Petrarchism, moving to a (...) discussion of the translation of her work from Italian to English and the creation of the “Twitterature” version of the text, then finally to an analysis of the text’s transformation into the film medium. This paper also investigates the theoretical premises of digital remediation and the role that hypertext plays in multiplying opportunities for meaning-making and in enriching the act of reading and writing. (shrink)

In the years around 1900 one of the most significant practical consequences of new styles of bacteriological thought and practice was the development of preventive vaccines and therapeutic sera. Historical scholarship has highlighted how approaches rooted in the laboratory methods of Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur and their collaborators were transformed in local contexts and applied in diverse ways to enable more effective disease identification, prevention and treatment. Amongst these, the anti-anthrax serum developed by the Italian physician Achille Sclavo (1861–1930) has (...) received little to no attention from historians. This article positions Sclavo's serum as a neglected but significant presence in British microbiology, which achieved widespread uptake amidst a wave of optimism, despite prolonged uncertainty about its mechanism of action and dosage. After being introduced to Britain in 1904 by the enterprising first medical inspector of factories Thomas Morison Legge, within a matter of months the serum became regarded by medical practitioners as an effective treatment of cutaneous anthrax, though access to ‘fresh’ serum and the necessary speedy diagnosis remained problematic. Like the disease anthrax itself, discussion of ‘Sclavo's serum’ was out of all proportion to the relatively low number of cases, reflecting a deep-seated fascination with the wider possibilities afforded by effective serum therapy. (shrink)

Taking the regime established by the Convention on Biological Diversity as a foundation, the purpose of this article is twofold. First, it examines how the international biodiversity regime integrates the private property paradigm into its toolbox for conservation and sustainability and then critically evaluates the shortcomings of the intellectual property mechanism. Second, it argues that the increasing ubiquity of open access emerging technologies should lead the international community to carefully assess the benefits for conservation research of reverting to a framework (...) that places biodiversity within the global commons. The impasse between global commons advocates and the intellectual property status quo obscures the underlying problematic of the “commodity fiction” of biodiversity and increasing use of digital sequence information likely exacerbates power asymmetries. One remedy explored here is an alternative to these two approaches that dislodges rather than discards the concept of private property. Drawing inspiration from Polanyi and building on May (2010), the article shows how a hybrid approach bridging a public and private conception of genetic resources and traditional knowledge could more effectively and equitably distribute benefits to countries and communities providing resources of value to industry. (shrink)

The Digital Revolution is transforming the way in which we interact with one another and relate to experience. The superabundance and superfluity of the virtual world, the fleeting moment and instantaneous pleasure it provides, begin to prevail as a cultural value and determine an attitude of detachment and indifference that extends to all aspects of our life. For Søren Kierkegaard this is a “demoniacal temptation” that leads to a life devoid of spiritual depth. In the midst of the undeniable bounties (...) of technology, reflection on this paradoxical nature of the technological in our lives becomes an urgent task. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse how GPS-based navigation systems are transforming some of our intellectual virtues and then suggest two strategies to improve our practices regarding the use of such epistemic tools. We start by outlining the two main approaches in virtue epistemology, namely virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. We then discuss how navigation systems can undermine five epistemic virtues, namely memory, perception, attention, intellectual autonomy, and intellectual carefulness. We end by considering two possible interlinked ways of trying to remedy (...) this situation: [i] redesigning the epistemic tool to improve the epistemic virtues of memory, perception, and attention; and [ii] the cultivation of cognitive diligence for wayfinding tasks scaffolding intellectual autonomy and carefulness. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression, and as the Second World War was drawing to a close, Karl Polanyi concluded a critical analysis of market capitalism on an optimistic — and with the benefit of hindsight we can add premature — note, remarking that the ‘primacy of society’ over the economic system had been ‘secured’. Eighty years later, amidst the unresolved turmoil of another comparable global capitalist economic crisis and accumulating signs of a growing environmental crisis, both a (...) direct legacy of the operation of the ‘market economy’, the remedy advocated by governments and policy-makers is effectively a return to ‘business as usual’. Notwithstanding various manifestations of public expression of dissatisfaction with the consequences of global ‘free-market’ capitalism, which include increasing inequality, poverty, unemployment, depletion of scarce natural resources, environmental destruction, pollution and waste, the default policy setting remains to restore global economic growth, to generate further increases in production and cultivate ever-rising rates of consumption, even if the risk is ‘common ruin’. However, there are a number of realistic, progressive and radical alternatives proposed by critical analysts, including a political program for ‘de-growth’, a reinvention of communism and detailed policy proposals outlining the measures necessary to promote a transition to a ‘post-capitalist’ society with a sustainable economy. (shrink)

Should the Western democracies, contrary to their prevailing self-image as "planned" and "managed," be seen as highly disorganized systems of social power and political authority? If so, what are the symptoms, consequences of, and possible remedies for these disorganizing tendencies?In these ten essays, Claus Offe seeks to answer such questions. Moving beyond the boundaries of both Marxism and established forms of political sociology, he focuses on the growth of serious divisions within the work force, the importance of the "informal" (...) sector, the severe difficulties faced by trade unions in coping with the present economic crisis, the vulnerability of neocorporatist mechanisms, and the failures of state policymaking based on either majority rule or bureaucratic administration.In examining these and other fundamental problems of advanced capitalist democracies, Offe also contests some widely held assumptions of contemporary social science. He calls into question the neutrality of liberal democratic mechanisms of participation and representation, the centrality of the category of work and the division between labor and capital, and the feasibility and desirability of full employment.Claus Offe is the author of numerous books and essays, including Contradictions of the Welfare State. He is currently Professor of Political Science and Sociology in the Faculty of Sociology, University of Bielefeld, West Germany. John Keane is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Sociology at the Polytechnic of Central London. Disorganized Capitalism is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

Feminist scholarship has increasingly turned towards the ocean as a conceptual apparatus in which to think through the complex philosophical and ethical dilemmas of the Anthropocene. Responding to the ebbs, flows and transformations of the oceanic turn, our article outlines our interactions with four decorator crabs. It begins by situating our experience of thinking-with these crabs as a feminist practice of care within the conceptual context of the ocean. Our article then draws on the knowledge that arose out of our (...) fertile entanglements with the crabs to propose that: 1) the aquarium, with its colonial histories of subjugation, is a fertile space to re-image human–aquatic relationalities, revealing the fallacy of human control over ‘nature’ and emphasising the agency of marine worlds; 2) Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality is a powerful way to think through the consequences of an acidifying ocean, both for ourselves and for our shelled companions; and 3) remediation is a radical approach to taking seriously the materiality of watery worlds. The objective of the article is to craft a practice of material feminism that entangles our more-than-human bodies to learn-with decorator crabs. In doing so, we show that the aquarium is a potent space of transformation that allows us to imagine new and distinctly feminist entanglements that dismantle hierarchies. We show that thinking-with the materiality of marine worlds is a series of remediations, both material and discursive, that dissolve the boundaries between entities, creating an embodied environmental ethics that is necessary as a feminist challenge to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibilities of the recognition and valuation of care by implementing an unconditional basic income and presents a feminist redefinition of the concept of a UBI. The author proposes the notion of a caring revolutionary transformation as a process of institutionalising the social and economic conditions for recognition of care which is a cornerstone of struggles for women’s emancipation and gender equity. It is a process of practically realisable transformative steps which together with their combined and (...) mutually reinforcing effects enable more radical social changes beyond a mere reform. The author argues that these transformative steps have to address two conditions embedded in the institutionalised structures of late modern capitalist society: the limited understanding of meaningful work as paid employment; and the liberal ideal of the independent and autonomous individual. Whereas a UBI can challenge the first condition, a public model of care questions the second condition by shifting the primary responsibility of care from the family towards a social solidarity. While insufficient when introduced separately, the combination of these two remedies has the potential to radically alter social structures on which gendered inequalities rest. (shrink)

Philosophy has often been criticized for privileging the abstract; this volume attempts to remedy that situation. Focusing on one of the most concrete of human concerns, food, the editors argue for the existence of a philosophy of food.

The concept of testimonial injustice (TI) has been expanded considerably since Fricker's groundbreaking original formulation. Testimonial void (TV), as well as other kinds of TI identified in the last decade, encourage the idea that the virtue of testimonial justice (TJ) is not the appropriate remedy to battle against injustice in our testimonial exchanges. This paper contributes to the existing literature on the limitations of TJ as the remedy for TI by drawing attention to its shortcomings in the context of other (...) kinds of TI. By contrast, I propose furtherengaging epistemically with the other(EE) as a corrective to injustice in our testimonial exchanges. I understand EE as a practice in which information regarding epistemic injustice, strategies to fight it and skills training play the leading roles. If the problem lies in lack of appropriate epistemic interaction between knowers, we need to train ourselves to do what we fail to do. Given that we are in the domain of testimony, EE essentially amounts to engaging further with the other in conversation. In the process, EE sheds light on the need for second-order change to fight TI, as enacting EE would require the transformation of our concepts of testimony and credibility. (shrink)

This paper examines the iconic conception of aesthetic education in the work of Friedrich Schiller, with the aim of elucidating Schiller’s unique innovation of this notion in understanding i) the relationship between aesthetic and ethical value and ii) the transformative possibilities within a collective, social dimension of aesthetic experience. The paper provides an overview of the Kantian origins of Schiller’s aesthetic programme (Section 1). It then considers Schiller’s critique of the perceived failings of the Kantian and Enlightenment republican models (...) of ethical value and political emancipation (Section 2) before turning to his positive alternative aesthetic programme (Section 3). The paper concludes (Section 4) with some evaluation and reflection on Schiller’s original contributions. (shrink)

This paper analyses the connection between knowing Dao and ethical transformation in Xunzi’s thought. While there have been many discussions concerning what Dao is and how one may come to Dao, there has not been sufficient attention on how knowing Dao leads to ethical transformation. In Section 2, I explicate Xunzi’s concept of bi 蔽 and suggests that one’s not knowing Dao has to do with a certain problematic state of the heart/mind. In Section 3, I analyse xu虛, yi 一, (...) and jing 靜, which are remedial practices for knowing Dao, and bring out the importance of discerning li 理 for Xunzi. In Sections 4 and 5, I propose an interpretation of the relation between li 理 and qing 情 in the process of ethical transformation. In Section 6, I highlight some remaining ambiguities that can be further investigated to deepen our understanding of Xunzi’s thought. (shrink)

Every day, thousands of polls, surveys, and rating scales are employed to elicit the attitudes of humankind. Given the ubiquitous use of these instruments, it seems we ought to have firm answers to what is measured by them, but unfortunately we do not. To help remedy this situation, we present a novel approach to investigate the nature of attitudes. We created a self-transforming paper survey of moral opinions, covering both foundational principles, and current dilemmas hotly debated in the media. This (...) survey used a magic trick to expose participants to a reversal of their previously stated attitudes, allowing us to record whether they were prepared to endorse and argue for the opposite view of what they had stated only moments ago. The result showed that the majority of the reversals remained undetected, and a full 69% of the participants failed to detect at least one of two changes. In addition, participants often constructed coherent and unequivocal arguments supporting the opposite of their original position. These results suggest a dramatic potential for flexibility in our moral attitudes, and indicates a clear role for self-attribution and post-hoc rationalization in attitude formation and change. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate the concept, social entrepreneurship, as a potential lever in economic and social transformation of the poorest-of-the-poor community of Nellmapius township, east of Pretoria, South Africa. I identify definitions of ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘social entrepreneurship’, and delve into the historical development of the concept ‘entrepreneur’. South Africa is in an era where it needs more new venture creation. Hence, I have studied new venture formation, especially from the perspective of Schumpeter’s theory of ways of forming a new (...) firm. South Africa lags behind in new venture development compared toother developing countries; I investigated the causes behind this and suggest remedies to address this. Postfoundationalist practical theology is seen as a way of doing theology in the midst of those who suffer poverty and lack. The methods of this approach are dealt with in this article, which also asks what theology can bring to the table of interdisciplinary engagement? (shrink)

Elijah Fenton’s Phaon to Sappho has so far never been in the focus of literary criticism. The article aims at a more detailed understanding of Fenton’s technique of literary reception by means of a close reading of both Phaon to Sappho and Fenton’s model, the Ovidian Epistula Sapphus. As will be seen, Fenton offers an unexpected perspective on the ancient myth through the eyes of ‘his’ Phaon: Phaon did not leave Sappho out of faithlessness but was completely unable to entertain (...) any feelings of true love, because he had been cursed by Venus for being unfaithful to his former girl-friend in Malea. Phaon merely enjoyed Sappho’s gift of song as a temporary remedy for the agony within his cursed mind, but had to leave her whenever she stopped singing. At this point Phaon is asking for Sappho’s intercession with Venus on his behalf. Although Fenton makes crucial changes to the plot, he does neither ‘deconstruct’ nor ‘correct’ the myth as such: instead, he meticulously retains all the major motifs developed in Ovid’s epistle and thus achieves a literary transformation of the myth, enabling the reader to regard either perspective on the two protagonists’ relationship as logically possible. (shrink)

What does it mean to become utopian? In the midst of a global pandemic, civil unrest, and the effects of climate change, this question is more relevant than ever. While Tom Moylan agrees with Fredric Jameson that there has been a "weakening of utopian muscularity", in his magnus opus Becoming Utopian: The Culture and Politics of Radical Transformation, he endeavors to remedy this problem, as each chapter advances his core belief in utopianism. A common thread woven throughout the book is (...) that utopianism is predicated on a rupture with the current socioeconomic, cultural, and political systems and that it is a process centered on a "not yet existent reality"... (shrink)

The structure of this intervention is deliberately schizo-analytic: “and then—,” and “then—.” They are preparatory notes for a webinar by Transform! Europe on the COVID, arranged before the global explosion of Black Lives Matter. I question the top-down philanthropy of the bourgeois Left. I take the Rohingyas as bottom-line victims. I speak from two hometowns—Calcutta and New York. I ask the bourgeois Euro-U.S. Left not to monolithize the Global South. Many examples of how “India” is constructed are given. From New (...) York, the United States is declared a failed state. Trump’s delinquencies are mentioned. It is argued that the only remedy at present is human behaviour and the typical U.S. character is not ready to practice this. This empirical fact shows the failure of the Kantian Sublime and reminds us that Kant thinks that the human moral will comes in to protect us from a hugely frightening natural phenomenon only by “subreption,” the same impulse that says that following steps provided by institutional religion will absolve us. Class and caste are taken into consideration throughout. I mention that as a coronavirus convalescent, I am donating plasma regularly. (shrink)

Summary In about 1735, Emilie Du Châtelet began to translate Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. Her work, which is largely ignored by scholars, did, as this article demonstrates, turn out to be one of transformation rather than of translation and came at a crucial moment in the emerging French luxury debate. So far commercial society and luxury had been defended in purely economic terms, for instance in Melon's Essai politique, or as an aspect of divine providence for fallen man, by (...) Pierre Nicole amongst others. There was as yet no coherent defence on the level of secular ethics. As this article shows, Du Châtelet set out to remedy this. In co-operation with Voltaire, with whose recent praise of English society in the Lettres philosophiques she strongly identified, she rewrote the Fable to offer a defence of modern commercial society as both natural and moral. The article argues that she was able to do so by taking recourse to classic Epicureanism in the guise of Lucretius' De rerum natura, as an alternative to the Neo-Epicureanism, with its Augustinian overtones, as espoused by Mandeville. Voltaire in turn used her translation to lay the foundations for his defence of commercial society and progress in his Traité de métaphysique in which he uses the precise passages she had inserted into Mandeville's original. This article analyses the further aspects Voltaire adds to her arguments. Taken together, Du Châtelet's ?translation? and Voltaire's Traité offer a coherent defence of bourgeois society that would underlie Voltaire's later historiographical and philosophical works and which were crucial to his concept of ?Enlightenment? and ?progress? (shrink)

In this article, I revisit the question of socio-economic transformation in South Africa to illustrate how it connects with human rights, essentially because, as I argue, transformation is unattainable without a comprehensive understanding of the central role of human rights in activating that process. I state the claim that the progressive human rights culture on the basis of which South Africa launched itself from the demise of apartheid into one of the most treasured constitutional democracies globally is noticeably disintegrating, displaying (...) signs of post-independence failures that have bedevilled many other African countries. It leaves unanswered questions with regard to the transitional promise for a better life and equitable opportunities. Not only is the political intent to actualise the project for socio-economic transformation apparently lacking, prospects that the expectations of the impoverished segments of the population may never be fulfilled prompts the need for an in-depth diagnosis of the contrasts that dissociate the country from its constitutional commitment to remedy the injustices of the past, which remain visible in legislation, policies, institutional practices, governance mechanisms and social perceptions that seem to be hardwired to accommodate transformation. I aim to demonstrate that even though South Africa’s constitutional democracy is anchored on a radical undertaking to eradicate the injustices that unreasonably limit options for the larger part of the population, there is no genuine adherence to the constitutional standards for transformation under the present dispensation, which is shaped by misconceived and misdirected priorities at the expense of human rights that lie at the core of the project for socio-economic transformation. I articulate these viewpoints by bringing into sharper focus the connection between human rights and transformation so that perhaps, the arguments may provide conceptual direction in academic discourses and probably also shape policy direction in crafting transformative solutions to the socio-economic exigencies that South Africa is confronted with. (shrink)

This book examines new concept of evolutionary ontology based on the idea of radically different "ontic orders" - natural and cultural being. It explains how culture evolved out of nature and how it became "anti-natural". The remedy is seen in the global biophilous reconstruction of culture. The value of the "live planet" Earth and the "subject" capable of creative activity and evolution are given fundamental philosophical interpretation.

Résumé Dans les livres I et II du Periphyseon, Érigène évoque les « causes primordiales » (correspondant à la deuxième division de la Nature ) sans spécifier d’ordre de priorité entre elles. Une réponse à une question posée par l’ Alumnus à ce sujet remédie à cette omission dans les premières pages du livre III. Érigène se place initialement sous l’autorité de Denys et argue du fait que, dès lors que les noms divins du De Divinis Nominibus correspondent à ses (...) propres « causes primordiales », il est permis d’adopter l’ordre du traité dionysien. Toutefois, Érigène passe rapidement à la démonstration rationnelle. Il expose alors quelques-uns des principes constitutifs de l’ordonnancement des causes primordiales. Dans cette section de l’exposé, il est fait un usage intensif de l’analogie de la sphère géométrique afin de soutenir la conclusion surprenante selon laquelle il n’est d’ordre perceptible ni au début ni à la fin de la procession des causes dans les existants créés. La plausibilité d’une telle conclusion tient aux aspects théophanique, non discursif et idéaliste de la théorie d’Érigène. Le théologien irlandais expose ensuite un cas spécifique de l’ordonnancement des causes primordiales et fait valoir que la cause primordiale de la Bonté précède la cause primordiale de l’Être. L’ Alumnus se montre satisfait de l’explication de son maître et procède à la synthèse de ce qu’il a appris, quoique certains aspects de son résumé suggèrent qu’il est passé à côté de quelques-uns des traits les plus subtils de la théorie. Un post-scriptum traite brièvement de la question de savoir si des réminiscences de la Consolation de la Philosophie de Boèce ne sont pas à l’œuvre dans cette théorie érigénienne. (shrink)

Claims about the transformations enabled by modern science and medicine have been accompanied by an unsettling question in recent years: might the knowledge being produced undermine--rather than further--human and animal well being? On the Dual Uses of Science and Ethics examines the potential for the skills, know-how, information, and techniques associated with modern biology to serve contrasting ends. In recognition of the moral ambiguity of science and technology, each chapter considers steps that might be undertaken to prevent the deliberate spread (...) of disease. Central to achieving this aim is the consideration of what role ethics might serve. To date, the ethical analysis of the themes of this volume has been limited. This book remedies this situation by bringing together contributors from a broad range of backgrounds to address a highly important ethical issue confronting humanity during the 21st century. (shrink)

While most commentators believe that the print book will survive the advent of the ebook, it is at the same time hard not to think that the fundamental technological changes ushered in by the digital revolution will fail to have profound effects on the forms of the book. Arguing that literary forms have always depended on the “material conditions of their enunciation,” the French author François Bon uses historical examples to suggest the book will undergo major, if yet unforeseen, transformations. (...) He maintains that it is urgent for writers to experiment with the possibilities brought about by the digital revolution, lest the actual developments be decided by the commercial interests of large technology entities. In his own experiments with the form of the book in the digital environment -- in his “novel” Tumulte, which consists of daily blog posts that mix fiction, memoir, criticism, and other genres, and in a series of digital remediations of his early novel, Limite -- Bon imaginatively explores the limits of the concept of the book. Yet while these experiments are suggestive, it is less clear that they represent viable avenues for the book’s development, since their main appeal is arguably for scholars and theoreticians. Focusing on the means of organization and delivery, and the ontological ambiguities arising from the multiple versions of the same text, Bon’s experiments skirt the core power of the book: the sustained arrangement of words that has been the principle means whereby books have conveyed content and sustained intellectual culture. (shrink)

‘The loss of a stable state’ (Schon 1973 ) in organizational transformation can both be regarded as lamentable and inevitable. Transformation causes disruption and invasions of comfort zones to those affected by it, but it is nevertheless inevitable. The article maintains that while the loss of a stable state is inevitable in the stream of change confronting organizations today, points of stability and methods of dealing with instability are attainable through responsible management. The article postulates that steps taken by responsible (...) leadership in response to specific business crises will reduce the effects of instabilities brought about by such transformational situations and reassert a stable state more rapidly. Utilizing Weber’s ‘ideal type’ model format (Morrison 2006 ) with a specific example of international best practice of remedial steps taken by management in reaction to a specific crisis experienced by an organization, the article uses a qualitative historical case study analysis and quantitative time series research design to investigate South African firms which had recently faced crises impinging on their current corporate reputations. Findings suggest that both the number of remedial steps taken by companies and the speed in which they are implemented in conformance with the model are negatively associated with the size of the share price falls immediately post crises. The findings also suggest that larger share price appreciations over 6-month post-crises are associated with greater perceived corporate reputations and brand strengths. Tentative conclusions and possibilities for further research are briefly discussed. (shrink)

In the contemporary debate about values, information technology constitutes an important source of hard ethical questions and in turn is a testing area for the moral theory of values. Values are difficult to track down and yet there are a number of inquiries starting from economics, social psychology, ethics, and political theory that engage with the cognitive, epistemic, and moral status of values. This paper is a contribution to an account of values in connection with information technology. It argues that (...) information technology may provide further support to a theory of values that is able to embrace the transformative effects of the digital revolution. In particular, it is plausible that a non-ideal reflection on digital wrongdoings is better equipped to produce substantive knowledge about values that have been undermined than a different approach focused on ideal guiding values. Moreover, information technology overcomes the vaunted fact/value dichotomy and supports the fact/value entanglement. As the principal concern of data-mining and machine-learning communities are ways of remedying a remarkable number of biases and conformism in techno-social systems, it is within the bounds of possibility to supplement the non-ideal theory from this new practical angle. I therefore call for a fully conceptual consideration of values drawing on the experience and reflection that is growing in the field of information technology. (shrink)

Concerned to remedy the ‘state of severe disarray’ that immobilises the left in advanced capitalist countries, Howard Chodos and Colin Hay set out to inquire into ‘the organisational conditions that are necessary to the radical transformation of capitalism'. This disarray is expressed in the drift of social-democratic parties in the wake of the neoliberal mainstream, the inability of a fragmented and disappearing radical Left to orient either itself or spontaneous resistance to the global neoliberal agenda, and the failure of the (...) ‘new’ social movements as a vehicle of ‘broader social transformation'. Against this background of fragmentation, dispersal and division, the authors spell out their central contention: the idea that ‘there is a distinctively creative component to politics', as the claim that organisation in general and the political party in particular provide the necessary context for the actualisation of ‘belief-dependent emergent capacities'. Fulfilling a ‘multi-dimensional mediating function', the party provides ‘an indispensable context in which we can define who we are and what we stand for', a locus for the definition of commonalities, and hence it constitutes a basis for strategic action. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

Taking Philosophy Seriously initiates a meta-philosophical dialogue that challenges the division between academic and practical philosophy. In contradistinction to the perfectionist tradition of philosophy, it offers a melioristic view of philosophy that rethinks the approach to philosophy, reinvigorates its academic teaching and secures the respectability of its practitioners outside the academe. It addresses the neglected topic of philosophers education through a subtle analysis of the mentor-apprentice relationship and the remedies philosophers have found to its tensions. It reveals the problems (...) inherent in emulating past practical philosophies from Alexandrian times, the Enlightenment or the 19th century, and the necessity of reevaluating the tools, reconsidering the means, and rethinking the methods of the contemporary practice of philosophy. To that purpose, it problematizes the notions of dialogue, self-knowledge, and self-transformation, and questions the feasibility of autonomy and self-integration as well as the differentiation between philosophy and psychology. It offers original solutions to the problems it highlights and points to unique benefits in the practice of philosophy that contribute to resolving the contemporary crisis of philosophy.This book combines high academic standards and an accessible style, and will engage academic and practical philosophers alike, professionals in education and the helping professions, and the general public. -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Global Corruption and Ethics Management: Transforming Theory into Action is focused on integrating research from a diverse array of scholars and translating it into proactive skills; the empirical content is presented clusters of short chapters, each cluster or section is followed by a synopsis of skills for implementation based upon this new knowledge. The scope of the content encompasses the work of top scholars and experienced professionals from across the globe to strategically outline the mercurial nature of corruption, its causes, (...) the systems and practices that facilitate it, its short- and long-term consequences, new measures for assessing and diagnosing remedies, and steps that can be taken to prevent it. Scholars and students can use it as a jumping-off point for further research, and practitioners can immediately expand their repertoire of tools in preventing and fighting corruption through implementation of the skills synopses. Further, incorporating digital media resources such as a companion website offering links to measurements and assessments, and accessible instructors' tools will dramatically shift the benchmark for studying and implementing Global Corruption and Ethics Management; there is no other book on corruption AND ethics management with the empirical gravitas, variety of application tools, and with this level of accessibility. (shrink)

Dr André Berge : médecin et psychanalyste, est directeur médical du Centre psycho-pédagogique Claude Bernard. Les données traditionnelles, toutes les valeurs, tous les principes sont discutés et sans cesse remis en cause. Et pourtant, personne ne saurait échapper à la nécessité d’adopter dans l’existence une ligne de conduite — c’est-à-dire une morale — sous peine de sombrer dans l’incohérence. Mais l’homme, s’il a besoin d’une morale, n’en est pas moins enclin à l’utiliser pour s’écraser lui-même et tend parfois à transformer (...) cet instrument en une arme qu’il lui arrive de retourner contre sa propre personne. C’est cela qu’il s’agit d’empêcher. Ce que veut établir cet ouvrage, ce sont les bases d’une morale psychologique tendant à remédier au désarroi des esprits et à contribuer à l’avènement d’un nouvel humanisme. (shrink)

Today's industrial society is having an encounter with ecology: in April, 1976 the French government presented the National Assembly with documents on the dumping and burning of waste in the sea, as well as on the protection of nature. Electoral campaigns, discussions and demonstrations are centered about the theme of pollution and environment. In the last century the accumulation of waste had already become a problem : “ One of the most important duties of industry is to find a useful (...) employment for waste,” wrote P. L. Simmons in 1875. The advice was heeded if we may believe what J. Gottmann wrote on the matter nearly a century later: “ If our era is to be defined by its most important raw material and one that is truly proper to it, as is done for the Bronze Age or the Iron Age, we may no longer speak of a Steel or Petroleum Age, nor of an Atomic Age (which may come in the future) but of the Garbage Age.” The extraordinary demographic expansion of humanity that has gone from a population of five million in the Paleolithic Age to four billion today gives rise to a monstrous abundance of refuse resulting as much from the natural mechanisms of living as from industrial activity (factory waste) or from the present attitude haunted by the idea of obsolescence (the throw-away society of Alvin Toffler). The outline of a universe submerged in waste matter appears, similar to that evoked by Italo Calvino in Città Invisibili apropos of the town of Leonia: “The refuse of Leonia would gradually invade the world if the interminable garbage heaps were not pressed upon, beyond the last crest, by the refuse of other towns that also push mountains of refuse far away from themselves. Perhaps the entire world beyond the borders of Leonia is covered with craters of trash, each with a continually erupting metropolis in its center. The borders between foreign or enemy towns are thus contaminated bastions in which the detritus of the one and the other serves as mutual support, menacing and mixing together.” The world of Metamorphosis is approaching in which man, transformed into an insect, covered with dust and remains of food, gnaws on the cores and parings of half-rotten vegetables. Science fiction invents a remedy to fit the problem : a planet specialized in storing all the garbage unloaded by an entire galaxy. (shrink)

The Yoga Sutras are Patanjali's classic on how to experience oneness (Samadhi) within yoga practice. Many serious yoga students want to bring the wisdom of the Sutras to their practice, but often find the text impenetrable and difficult to relate to. The Tantra of the Yoga Sutras remedies this by offering an interpretation that is uniquely relatable, teachable, and accessible. Yogi and tantric master Alan Finger shows contemporary practitioners and students that Samadhi is not something that we strive for (...) in the future, but something that we can experience now. Many interpreters of the Yoga Sutras describe Samadhi as an unreachable goal for the ordinary yogi. Finger's interpretation delivers yoga practices that are doable, with attainable and transformative results. (shrink)

Phytoremediation is a biological remediation technique known for low-cost technology and environmentally friendly approach, which employs plants to extract, stabilise, and transform various compounds, such as potentially toxic elements (PTEs), in the soil or water. Recent developments in utilising chelating agents soil remediation have led to a renewed interest in chelate-induced phytoremediation. This review article summarises the roles of various chelating agents and the mechanisms of chelate-induced phytoremediation. This paper also discusses the recent findings on the impacts of chelating agents (...) on PTEs uptake and plant growth and development in phytoremediation. It was found that the chelating agents have increased the rate of metal absorption and translocation up to 45% from roots to the aboveground plant parts during PTEs phytoremediation. Besides, it was also explored that the plants may experience some phytotoxicity after adding chelating agents to the soil. However, due to the leaching potential of synthetic chelating agents, the use of organic chelants have been explored to be used in PTEs phytoremediation. Finally, this paper also presents comprehensive insights on the significance of using chelating agents through SWOT analysis to discuss the advantages and limitations of chelate-induced phytoremediation. (shrink)