While scholars have suggested several explanations to how and why societies deal with an authoritarian past, to date there has been little discussion about religious legacies in postcommunist transitional justice. Building upon emerging qualitative research, this study breaks ground by showing that lustration, a transitional-justice mechanism which limits the political participation of former authoritarian actors, is statistically robustly affected by societies’ mainstream religious legacy. Analyzing thirty-four postcommunist states from 1990 to 2012, tobit regression models (...) demonstrate that Catholic and Protestant traditions affect lustration positively, Muslim traditions negatively, while the impact of Orthodox traditions remains statistically insignificant. The findings problematize but support an understanding of religious traditions as potentially corresponding to complicity with the former regime, which in turn affects lustration during postcommunist upheavals. (shrink)

Transitional justice scholars are increasingly concerned with measuring the impact of transitional justice initiatives. Scholars often assume that TJ mechanisms must be properly designed and ordered to achieve lasting effect, but the impact of TJ timing and sequencing has attracted relatively little theoretical or empirical attention. Focusing on Latin America, this article explores variation within the region as to when TJ occurs and the order in which mechanisms are implemented. We utilize qualitative comparative analysis to assess the (...) impact of TJ timing and sequencing on democratic development. We find little evidence for path dependency owing to the chronological order of mechanisms. We do find, however, that amnesties and trials approach a sufficient condition for democratic consolidation in Latin America; trials, however, come closest to being a necessary condition for successful democratic consolidation. (shrink)

There are many commonalities between the goals of transitional justice and domestic redress movements. We look at the movement for reparations for enslavement and Jim Crow in the United States as an example of a domestic reparations movement, and argue for the usefulness of the concept of transitional justice. We are particularly interested in showing that a future democratic transition – the end of mass incarceration – could animate a renewed push for reparations and a formal investigation into (...) America’s legacy of racial injustice. (shrink)

Transitional justice is positioned as an emergent discourse to grapple with the aim, and subsequent practices, of moving societies mired in violent political relations to more stable, democratic political relations. Increasingly, precepts of transitional justice are being applied to political reconciliatory processes in so- called liberal democratic states. This article examines limitations to transitional justice paradigms especially when applied to Indigenous-state reconciliatory processes by centering Indigenous scholarly discourse critical of both transitional justice and reconciliation processes that (...) position Indigenous peoples, Indigenous lands, and the landed violence of colonialism as fixed in the past. The article offers an analysis of the limitations of neoliberal transitional justice and reconciliation processes that do not realize justice for Indigenous peoples and Indigenous lands by highlighting Indigenous-centered accounts of justice that promote collective capacities of Indigenous nations rooted in the ability of Indigenous peoples to experience themselves in the world in ways that center relations to land, world, and relatives (human and non-human). (shrink)

At the century's end, societies all over the world are throwing off the yoke of authoritarian rule and beginning to build democracies. At any such time of radical change, the question arises: should a society punish its ancien regime or let bygones be bygones? Transitional Justice takes this question to a new level with an interdisciplinary approach that challenges the very terms of the contemporary debate. Ruti Teitel explores the recurring dilemma of how regimes should respond to evil rule, (...) arguing against the prevailing view favoring punishment, yet contending that the law nevertheless plays a profound role in periods of radical change. Pursuing a comparative and historical approach, she presents a compelling analysis of constitutional, legislative, and administrative responses to injustice following political upheaval. She proposes a new normative conception of justice--one that is highly politicized--offering glimmerings of the rule of law that, in her view, have become symbols of liberal transition.Its challenge to the prevailing assumptions about transitional periods makes this timely and provocative book essential reading for policymakers and scholars of revolution and new democracies. (shrink)

This paper analyzes how Transitional Justice mechanisms might be deployed to redress injustices resulting from the perpetration of ecocide. It develops the notion of ecocide as social deathas a class of environmental harms severe enough to trigger a Transitional Justice response. If a state authorizes ecological destruction in a way that demonstrates wanton disregard for the cultures intimately connected to those ecosystems, then it has violated core liberal principles of respect for pluralism. Transitional Justice can be effectively (...) utilized in overcoming these harms to transform societies from ones that tolerate grave forms of environmental destruction to eco-friendly states that further environmentalist aims. This paper explores how the four kinds of transitional justice mechanisms can aid in abating and mitigating environmental problems: (1) punitive justice mechanisms (criminal trials, lustration, and sanctions); (2) reparative justice mechanisms(reparations, rehabilitation, memorialization, apologies, and guarantees of non-repetition); (3) truth-oriented mechanisms(truth commissions, reports, and education programs); and (4) institutional reform mechanisms(changing laws and amending constitutions). (shrink)

The book is an accurate and accessible introduction to the complex and dynamic field of transitional and post-conflict justice, providing an overview of its recurring concepts and debated issues. Particular attention is reserved to how these concepts and issues have been addressed, both theoretically and literally, by lawyers, policy-makers, international bodies, and other actors informing the practice. By presenting significant, if undeniably disputable, alternatives to mainstream theories and past methods of addressing past injustice and (re)building a democratic state, the (...) work aims to illustrate some foundational themes of transitional justice that have emerged from a diverse set of discussions. The author's position thus arrives from a careful analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of answers to the question: how, after a traumatic social experience, is justice restored? (shrink)

In Our Moral Fate, Allen Buchanan defends an account of moral change that is grounded in evolutionary biology. His account offers resources for explaining the possibility of both moral progress and moral regression, where progress and regression are a function of moral inclusion and moral exclusion, respectively. In my commentary, I first offer a brief summary of Buchanan’s argument. I then examine Buchanan’s account from the perspective of transitional justice. Transitional justice provides confirming evidence for some (...) of Buchanan’s substantive claims and challenges the validity of others. I end with a discussion of power and time. Power plays a central role in Buchanan’s account of niche construction, but the locus of power is unspecified. Time scales for moral change are profoundly different for the timeline of transitional justice versus the timeline of evolutionary biology. My discussion of power and time raises questions the nature of the normative guidance Buchanan’s account offers in the short term. (shrink)

In anticipation of its closure in 2014, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has begun to set out proposals for preserving and promoting its legacy of prosecuting persons responsible for violations of humanitarian law during the conflicts of the 1990s. A key aspect of this legacy has been to support the ‘national ownership’ of the justice systems in the former Yugoslavia that will continue to try war crimes cases in the years to come. This study explores the institutional (...) development of the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (WCC) to national ownership. In particular, it considers three critical aspects of the WCC's functioning that highlight the challenges that it faces as a mechanism of transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). These are the composition of prosecutors and judges, prosecutorial practices and outreach and communication activities. The article shows that the continued difficulties with these areas of legal practice figure as significant obstacles to the WCC's transition to full national ownership by both the legal professionals and local populace of BiH. (shrink)

Transitional Justice (TJ) focuses on the processes of dealing with the legacy of large-scale past abuses (in the aftermath of traumatic experiences such as war or authoritarianism) with the aim of fostering domestic justice and creating the basis for a sustainable peace. TJ however also entails the problem of how a torn society may be able to become a self-determining member of a just international order. This paper presents a minimal conception of TJ, which departs from Rawls' conception of (...) normative stability of the international order, which suggests disentangling the two goals of fostering democracy within torn societies and TJ itself. The scope of TJ is therefore limited to enabling these societies to create minimal internal conditions for joining a just international order on equal footing. This paper makes an original contribution to two different debates, namely normative research on TJ, and post-Rawlsian literature in general. First, it provides a new direction for normative theorizing about TJ which takes both its domestic and international dimensions seriously into consideration. Second, it extends Rawls' political liberal outlook to an area where it is not usually understood to apply. (shrink)

The general perception regarding the political discourse produced in Romania after 1989 is that the actors prioritized a number of themes, which, in spite of their circumstantial dimensions, tended to become strongly established topics. From this perspective, transitional politics became a discursive locus for a number of issues, the actors repeatedly returning to the same ‘well‑worn roads’. Using as corpus samples of discourse from the first electoral campaign post‑1989, the study analyses if and how the controversial theme of the (...) recent historical legacies became a crucial topic during that interval, investigating the main approaches used by the actors and discussing whether or not these settled the frame of interpretation for the following interval. The paper draws on critical and historical discourse analysis, interpreting discourse as both text and context, language and action, discursive event and social situation. It represents an analysis of a topic that, over the years, has become a thematic keystone in political discourse. (shrink)

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis (...) will focus on a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement. (shrink)

This article investigates the contribution of white liberal politics of an ex-missionary New Zealander, Sir Reginald Stephen Garfield Todd, on the development of Southern Rhodesia towards becoming an independent state. It outlines the contribution he made towards the progress of black Zimbabweans in a number of spheres. It arouses interest in contemporary Zimbabwean religious and political discourses. Todd held a hybridity of roles in transitional politics from the blunting settler racism to the sharpening of African capability on multi-racial (...) democracy important for our debate on the decolonisation of southern Africa. He was a rhetorically gifted radical paternalist who adopted reformist policies to advance both the African cause and his prophetic vocation. He suggested technocratic solutions that could reorganise and diversify political and economic options.CONTRIBUTION: This study uses critical discourse analysis on the wider literature on Todd's biography and African policies in view of his Christian vocation towards changing conditions of socio-economic, political-religious and technological-technocratic solutions to contemporary African independence. He was a man of his times living and working in an increasingly problematic context guided by the Christian principles in which he was reared. He is the 'father of faith' in the Church of Christ in Zimbabwe, and leaves us pedagogical lessons on human security, gender equality, church governance and human well-being that require review within the contemporary Christian fraternity. (shrink)

The study of masculinity, particularly in peacebuilding and transitional justice contexts, is gradually emerging. The article outlines three fissures evident in the embryonic scholarship, that is the privileging of direct violence and its limited focus, the continuities and discontinuities in militarised violence into peace time, and the tensions between new masculinities and wider inclusive social change. The article argues for the importance of making visible the tensions between different masculinities and how masculinities are deeply entangled with systems of power (...) and post-conflict social, political and economic outcomes. An analysis of masculine power within and between the structures aimed at building the peace in societies moving out of violence is considered essential. The article argues for an analysis that moves beyond a preoccupation with preventing violent masculinities from manifesting through the actions of individuals to considering how hidden masculine cultures operate within a variety of hierarchies and social spaces. (shrink)

The _Epic of Gilgamesh_, a 3600-year 12-tablet collection, was looted from an Iraqi museum during the 1991 Gulf War, and fraudulently imported into the United States. In September, 2021, UNESCO facilitated its repatriation to Iraq, which is seen as an occasion to consolidate Iraq’s efforts to rebuild its legacy, since the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ is of immense cultural, historical and religious value for Iraq The current study examines the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ in the light of the ancient Sumerian and (...) Akkadian traditions. This collection of tablets carries a great legacy of the contemporary Babylonian and Mesopotamian beliefs and socio-religious values, also evident in the use of cuneiform and clay tablets, being ancient forms of writings. The study made use of content analysis and historical and analytical approaches to retrieve data through a documentation research design. The study found that the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ is not only a work of religious literature, but a treatise on civilization. On one hand it narrates the stories engrained in the Mesopotamian mythology, such as those of Ninsun, Shamash and Utnapishtim; on the other hand, owing to its content, literary style and tone, characterization and symbolism, this study would be a great contribution to relive the story of Gilgamesh from current literary, and socio-religious perspective and provide a comprehensive account of the legacy and inheritance that it brings in for the modern generation. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine the ways in which courts of constitutional review have tried to deal with public sentiments within societies emerging from large-scale oppression and conflict. A comparative analysis of judicial review decisions from post-communist Hungary, post-apartheid South Africa and post-dictatorial Argentina is meant to show-case how judges have, more or less successfully, recognised and pedagogically engaged social negative feelings of resentment and indignation towards former victimisers and beneficiaries of violence. Thus, the article hopes to pave the (...) way for more in-depth research on one of the most neglected dimensions of post-conflict societies: public affect. (shrink)

Transitional justice addresses legacies of social and political wrongdoing by coming to terms in some sense with the past and charting a path forward. In my dissertation, I introduce the complementary notion of ‘transitional ethics.’ Whereas transitional justice asks how we can dispense justice in the aftermath of widespread violence, transitional ethics asks how we can meet wider demands of morality in the aftermath of widespread violence. Although the formulation of the concept of transitional ethics (...) is novel, its deployment is not. In fact, nearly all transitional projects of the past several decades have included an implicit appeal to consequentialist transitional ethics. In my dissertation I make the case instead for a contractualist model of transitional ethics, one that both acknowledges the shared nature of the transitional project and affirms the agency of previously silenced individuals. (shrink)

This article discusses the political possibilities of personal forgiveness in transitional justice. Personal forgiveness is extended by a single human victim who has been harmed by a wrongdoer. The victim forgives only that harm which has been done to him or to her. Personal forgiveness is distinguishable from three other forms of forgiveness: group forgiveness, legal forgiveness (a form of group forgiveness), and political forgiveness. In the context of transitional justice, I argue that: (1) personal forgiveness is a (...) necessary condition for political forgiveness; (2) group forgiveness (including legal forgiveness), while not without a normative function, cannot effectuate either personal or political forgiveness, and (3) personal forgiveness requires a shared narrative framework to lead to political forgiveness. These assertions lead to two further observations. First, because the state has a normative role in its (limited) capacity to forgive on its own behalf and a practical role in its ability to spread and to transmit a shared narrative framework, the state is an important actor in political forgiveness. Second, because the primary historical example of political forgiveness in transitional justice is the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that unfolded within an explicitly Christian theological framework, it may be that the shared narrative framework need be religious or even Christian in nature. (shrink)

After a regime-changing war, a state often engages in lustration—condemnation and punishment of dangerous, corrupt, or culpable remnants of the previous system—e.g., de-Nazification or the more recent de-Ba’athification in Iraq. This common practice poses an important moral dilemma for liberals because even thoughtful and nuanced lustration involves condemning groups of people, instead of treating each case individually. It also raises important questions about collective agency, group treatment, and rectifying historical injustices. Liberals often oppose lustration because it denies moral individualism and (...) ignores rule of law, and their only justifications for lustration are consequentialist ones. This article suggests that lustration may not necessarily be a problem for liberals. While group treatment might be justified on grounds of convenience and pragmatism in times of transitional justice, there are also valid moral arguments consistent with moral individualism and due process for wholesale group punishment after a war. This article offers four overlapping moral justifications, in a robust defense of the core concept of lustration that is covered by each argument. (shrink)

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...) that of describing the human condition as consisting of choices, as unavoidable as arbitrary, without any attempt at providing criteria for making such choices. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the heir of ethics was a philosophy of morality, that is, an analysis of the language of morality that intended to clarify valuations without trying to justify them. 1958 was the year of the normative turn that led to the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy, a turn followed by decades of controversies between distinct kinds of normative ethics: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics. While the controversy was raging, a quiet revolution took place, that of applied ethics which surprisingly dissolved the controversy's very subject matter by providing methods for making convergence possible on intermediate principles even when no agreement was available about first principles. The normative turn and the revolution of applied ethics have led us, at the turn of the century, to a goal that was quite far from the starting point. Instead of scepticism and relativism that was the fashion at the beginning of the century, at the beginning of the third millennium impartial and universal moral arguments seem to hold the spot being supported, if not by a final rational foundation, at least by reasonableness, the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. -/- ● TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- ● I Anglo-Saxon philosophy: naturalism 1. Dewey beyond evolutionism and utilitarianism 2. Dewey and anti-essentialist moral epistemology 3. Dewey and naturalist moral ontology 4. Dewey and normative ethics of conduct and function 5. Perry and semantic naturalism -/- ● II Anglo-Saxon philosophy: ideal utilitarianism and neo-intuitionism 1. Moore's critique of utilitarian empiricism 2. Moore on the naturalistic fallacy 3. Moore on the nature of intrinsic value 4. Moore on ideal utilitarianism 5. Prichard on the priority of the right over the good 6. Ross's coherentist moral epistemology 7. Ross's moral ontology: realism, pluralism, and non-naturalism 8. Ross's normative ethics of prima facie duties -/- The chapter 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. It stresses the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. It argues that PE is more a patchwork of somewhat diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. -/- ●III Anglo-Saxon philosophy: non-cognitivism 1. The Scandinavian School, the Vienna circle and proto-emotivism 2. Wittgenstein and the ineffability of ethics 3. Russell's and Ayer's radical emotivism 4. Stevenson and moderate emotivism 5. Stevenson and the pragmatics of moral language 6. Stevenson and the methods for solving ethical disagreement 7. Hare and prescriptivism 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 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. A section reconstructs the discussion from the Forties about Hume's law, mentioning Karl Popper's argument and Richard Hare's early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- ●IV Anglo-Saxon philosophy: critics of non-cognitivism 1. Neo-naturalism and its objections to the naturalistic fallacy argument 2. Objections to Hume's law 3. Clarence Lewis and the pragmatic contradiction 4. Toulmin and the good reasons approach 5. Baier and moral reasons 5. Baier, social moralities and the absolute morality 6. Baier and the moral point of view 7. Baier and the contents of absolute ethics -/- ● V Continental philosophy: the philosophy of values 1. Max Weber and the polytheism of values 2. Phenomenology against psychologism and rationalism 3. Reinach and the theory of social acts 4. Scheler and the material ethics of values 5. Hartmann and the ontology of values 6. Plessner, Gehlen and the Philosophische Anthropologie -/- 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 apriori 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 conducted 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 sketches the ideas 'discovered' later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section discusses 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 be Husserl's legitimate heirs. -/- ● VI Continental philosophy: the critics of the philosophy of values 1. Freud, the Superego and Civilization 2. Heidegger on original ethos against ethics 3. Sartre and de Beauvoir on authenticity and ambiguity 4. Adorno and Horkheimer on emancipation and immoralism -/- ●VII Post-liberal theologians and religious thinkers 1. Barth on the autonomy of faith from ethics 2. Developments of Reformed moral theology after Barth 3. Bonhoeffer on the concrete divine command and ethics of penultimate realities 4. Developments of Reformed and Catholic moral theology after world war II 5. Baeck and the transformation of liberal Judaism 6. Rosenzweig against liberal Judaism 7. Buber and religion as the vital lymph of morality 8. Heschel and Judaism as a science of actions -/- The chapter examines the main protagonists of Christian theology and Jewish religious thinking in the twentieth century. It stresses how the main dilemmas of contemporary philosophical ethics lie at the root of the various path of inquiry taken by these thinkers. -/- ● VIII Normative ethics: neo-Utilitarianism 1. The discussion on act and rule utilitarianism 2. Hare on two-tiered preference utilitarianism 3. Harsanyi, Gauthier and rational choice ethics 4. Parfit, utilitarianism and the idea of a person 5. Brandt and indirect conscience 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 refuted. Two examples give the reader a glimpse at this uproarious process. 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 transformation 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 the eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of an action-guiding practical device. -/- ● IX Normative ethics: neo-Aristotelianism and virtue ethics 1. Hannah Arendt, action and judgement 2. Hans-Georg Gadamer and phronesis 3. Alasdair MacIntyre on practices, virtues, and traditions 5. Stuart Hampshire on deliberation 6. Bernard Williams and moral complexity 7. Feminist ethics -/- Sect 1 reconstructs 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. Heidegger's most brilliant disciples were the promoters of this Rehabilitation. Hans-Georg Gadamer is 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 significant role of the notion of phronesis. Sect 3 discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. It argues 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. The chapter gives a short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current 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 inevitable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- ● X Normative ethics: Kantian and rights-based ethics 1. Dialogical constructivism 2. Apel, Habermas and discourse ethics 3. Gewirth and rights-based ethics 4. Nagel on agent-relative reasons 5. Donagan and persons as ends in themselves Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This current started 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. The chapter offers an examination of his argument in some detail, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas's elaboration on Apel's theory. -/- ● XI The applied ethics renaissance 1. Elisabeth Anscombe on the atom bomb 2. From medical ethics to bioethics 3. Rawls and public ethics 3. Nozick, Dworkin and further developments of public ethics 5. Sen and the revival of economic 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. The chapter argues that Rawls's distinction between a "political" and a "metaphysical" approach to the theory of justice, one central part of ethical theory, is a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and the new casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter. The idea is 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 essential criteria for judgment. -/- ● XII Fin-de-siècle metaethics 1. Deontic logics 2. Anti-realism 3. External realism 4. Internal realism 5. Kantian constructivism -/- The chapter illustrates the fresh start of meta-ethical discussion in the Eighties and Nineties and the resulting new alignments: metaphysical naturalism, internal realism, anti-realism, and constructivism. (shrink)

Ranking systems such as The Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Rankings of World Universities simultaneously mark global status and stimulate global academic competition. As international ranking systems have become more prominent, researchers have begun to examine whether global rankings are creating increased inequality within and between universities. Using a panel Tobit regression analysis, this study assesses the extent to which markers of inter-institutional stratification and organizational segmentation predict global status among (...) US research universities as measured by position in ARWU. Findings indicate some support that both inter-institutional stratification and organizational segmentation predict global status. (shrink)

Opaque value chains as well as environmental, ethical and health issues and food scandals are decreasing consumer trust in conventional agriculture and the dominant food system. As a result, critical consumers are increasingly turning to community-supported agriculture (CSA) to reconnect with producers and food. CSA is often perceived as a more sustainable, localized mode of food production, providing transparent production or social interaction between consumers and producers. This enables consumers to observe where their food is coming from, which means CSA (...) is considered suitable for building trust in food (production). However, it remains unclear how exactly members’ trust in ‘their’ farmers is built. To determine the factors that predict members’ trust in CSA and its farmers, and the importance of these factors when compared to each other, we conducted a quantitative study among CSA members in Germany and applied a multiple regression model (n = 790). The analysis revealed that trust in CSA and its farmers is influenced by “reputation”, “supply of information”, “direct social interaction” and the “duration of CSA membership”. Other factors such as the “certification status of the CSA farm” and “attitudes toward organic certification” did not significantly predict trust. We conclude that producers’ willingness to be transparent already signals trustworthiness to CSA members and is more important to members than formal signals. Other actors within the food system could learn from CSA principles and foster a transition toward a more regionalized value-based food system to help restore agriculture’s integrity. (shrink)

This paper examines the importance of reconciliation in post-conflict state-building. We argue that while the economic and political aspects are vital components of the state-building tool-kit, states can hardly be reconstructed without the support of the society. Individuals and communities are central to the re-establishment of peace and democracy. We will conduct a case study analysis focusing on Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter Bosnia). After more than 10 years of international supervision, Bosnia remains fragmented by ethnic tension, and continues to (...) need the guidance of the United Nation’s Office of the High Representative and European Union Special Representative. The Dayton Accord provided little direction for how to proceed with reconciliation beyond a state-centered peace-agreement and constitution. This study suggests that the peacebuilding process that has taken place in Bosnia over the past decade has been unable to foster reconciliation and re-create social trust, two necessary elements for ensuring lasting peace in the aftermath of conflict. (shrink)

While the study of transitional justice, and especially truth commissions, has gained in popularity over the past two decades, the literature is overwhelmingly focused on activities in democratizing states. This introduces a selection bias that interferes with proper analysis of causes and consequences of transitional justice on a global scale. In this paper, I discuss conditions under which new repressive elites, and even old repressive elites who survive to rule and repress in nominally new systems, may choose (...) to launch broad investigations of the past. I argue that such a decision is based on two primary considerations, the presence of internally or externally based incentives (e.g., foreign aid) and the level of political control enjoyed by old elites in the new system. I apply this argument to post-Soviet Central Asia, including a detailed case study of Uzbekistan’s 1999 truth commission based on domestic media analysis and local elite interviews. (shrink)

Frege’s claim that proper names have senses has come to seem untenable following Kripke’s argument that names are rigid designators. It is commonly thought that if names had senses, their referents would vary with circumstances of evaluation. The article defends Frege’s claim by arguing that names have word-reflexive senses. This analysis of names’ senses does not violate Kripke’s noncircularity condition, and it differs crucially from related views of Bach and Katz. That names have reflexive senses confirms Frege’s own solution (...) to his puzzle about the content of identity sentences, solves Kripke’s Pierre and Peter puzzles about belief ascription, and entails that bearerless names have meanings. Furthermore, names’ having reflexive senses explains why they designate rigidly. (shrink)

In this article we investigate the nature of problem presentation and responses on an online forum for young people who self-harm. Previous studies have raised concerns about the peer encouragement of self-harming behaviours in online forums, and this analysis considers the nature of peer interaction on a specific forum, ‘ SharpTalk’. This was a research forum which explored the potential of online communities to foster engagement and shared learning between NHS professionals and young people who self-harm. This analysis (...) draws on conversation analysis methods to study problem presentation and responses, and nature of advice given. Analysis highlighted both the tendency to offer advice where it was not asked for, and the mundane ‘safe’ nature of advice. This awareness of how young people interact and provide support online is important for those setting up online interventions to support young people who self-harm. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the understanding on the reasons that lead to entrepreneurship in other countries. We focus on expat-preneurs, those who decided to undertake business opportunities in other countries (before or after settling there). Using comparison analysis and logistic regression, we examine pre-departure and transitioned expat-preneurs’ demographic characteristics and push-pull factors that lead them to expatriate. From a survey conducted in 2015-2016 of 5,532 Lithuanians expatriated in 24 countries, a sample of 308 respondents with their own businesses (...) abroad was selected. This research contributes to the literature on expat-preneurs, with empirical evidence on pre-departure and transitioned self-initiated (SI) expat-preneurs. The results revealed that demographic features matter when studying such global entrepreneurs. It is a process experienced differently by males and females and, as such, it can be considered as gender selective. Thus, more pre-departure expat-preneurs are male than female, but there is a growing number of female transitioned expat-preneurs. Pre-departure expat-preneurs are older and less educated than transitioned ones and have been pushed to move abroad by issues such as political corruption or a non-supportive tax system, and are attracted by a higher possibility of self-realisation as well as the prestige of the host country. Meanwhile, transitioned expat-preneurs have been pushed to emigrate due to family reasons or too few employment opportunities in their home country. (shrink)

Truth Be Told explains how truth and falsity result from relations that sentences and their constituents have to the circumstances at which they are evaluated. It offers a precise analysis of truth and a diagnosis of the Liar paradox. Current semantic theory employs generalized quantifiers as the extensions of noun phrases. The book provides simpler extensions for noun phrases. These permit intuitive compositions of truth-values and a diagnosis of the Liar and Grelling paradoxes.

This volume advances the research agenda of one of the most remarkable political thinkers of our time: Jon Elster. With an impressive list of contributors, it features studies in five topics in political and social theory: rationality and collective action, political and social norms, democracy and constitution making, transitional justice, and the explanation of social behavior. Additionally, this volume includes chapters on the development of Elster's thinking over the past decades. Like Elster's own writings, the essays in this collection (...) are problem-driven, non-ideal inquiries of practical relevance. This volume closes with lucid comments by Jon Elster. (shrink)

Whereas traditional abolitionist arguments call for putting an end to capital punishment, French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida emphasizes its survival, writing that “even when it will have been abolished, the death penalty will survive.” My dissertation interprets this perplexing claim by attending to the specificity of Derrida’s discourse on survival or survivance, contending that the death penalty serves an irreducible role in the constitution of the (individual or collective) subject, such that, even in the event of its abolition, some form of (...) the death penalty must continue. Through close readings of Heidegger, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Michel de Montagne, and Victor Hugo, as well as Shakespeare, linguist Émile Benveniste, Hungarian psychoanalysts Abraham and Torok, and the nineteenth-century political theorist Juan Donoso Cortés, the dissertation provides an account of the function of the death penalty as a specific institution within the modern penal system of a collective political body and as the legacy of ancient political economies based on sacrificial rites. This analysis interprets the death penalty both structurally and specifically, accounting for the indissociable relationship between the institution and its conceptual structure more broadly. Survivance, I argue, only ever occurs through an other, leaving open the question of the survival of the death penalty to the dissemination of indefinite and unpredictable forms that could consist in its abolition. (shrink)

So-called transitional justice has become more universal and in doing so now approximates a more general sense of justice, law, or the rule of law. The inquiry of the essay proceeds by way of a brief analysis of ‘transitional justice’ and related qualifying terms, such as ‘restorative’, ‘reconciliatory’, and ‘retroactive’. I consider the plausibility of identifying, deflating, or reducing each of them, with, or, to, the rule of law, or other general justicial notions. I illustrate the (...) class='Hi'>analysis, in a condensed form, through a case study of the Preamble to the Carcross/Tagish First Nation Constitution, a particular situation in the context of indigenous politics on the Canadian scene, one that focuses on negotiation of land-claims and self-government agreements in an historical epoch of continuing colonization and partial decolonization. I conclude by proposing that there is positive promise in the perpetual reconstruction of justice, or constitutionalizing. (shrink)

The first political theory of post-Communism examines its implications for understanding liberty, rights, transitional justice, property rights, privatization, rule of law, centrally planned public institutions, and the legacies of totalitarian thought in language and discourse. The transition to post-totalitarianism was the spontaneous adjustment of the rights of the late-totalitarian elite to its interest. Post-totalitarian governments faced severe scarcity in the supply of justice. Rough justice punished the perpetrators and compensated their victims. Historical theories of property rights became radical, and (...) consequentialist theories, conservative. Totalitarianism in Europe disintegrated but did not end. The legacies of totalitarianism in higher education met New Public Management, totalitarian central planning under a new label. Totalitarianism divorced language from reality through the use of dialectics that identified opposites and the use of logical fallacies to argue for ideological conclusions. This book illustrates these legacies in the writings of Habermas, Derrida, and Žižek about democracy, personal responsibility, dissidence, and totalitarianism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies Edited by Bernadette J. BrootenEboni Marshall TurmanBeyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies EDITED BY BERNADETTE J. BROOTEN New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 352 pp. $30.00In her introduction to this edited collection of essays, Bernadette Brooten asserts that religion has long been complicit in the construction and practice of the logic of human enslavement. She provocatively claims (...) that religion and the racial and sexual norms that emerge from religious inquiry have historically [End Page 236] designated women and other bodies that defy white male normativity as inherently “slaveable.” She further contends that the religious and sexual legacies of slavery are not relegated to a moment in time, now past and gone. Rather, contemporary society is the heir of a flesh-and-blood hierarchy that continues to shape its “social values, religious thought, and economic realities” (3). The remnants of enslavement persist among human communities not only as a lived reality that, as Mende Nazer suggests in the epilogue, continues to threaten the lives and life chances of poor women and children throughout the world, but also as a blood memory—a recollection that runs so deep into the social fabric of our theopolitical worlds that in spite of slavery’s superficial obscurity, it remains as the pulse of human everydayness, lurking beneath the surface of daily exchanges.The insidious legacies of slavery that emerge from bigoted God-talk promote dehumanizing racial-sexual stereotypes, dictate the quality of marriage and intimate relationships, corrupt and exploit sexual expression, and drive the development of public policy and law in ways that disproportionately marginalize and disempower women and girls. Consequently, this volume proposes resistance and calls readers to communal action that renounces slavery in all its forms.In parts 2, 3, and 4, the essays detail the racial, religious, and sexual character of slavery by focusing on the experience of black women’s oppression in America. This focus on the varieties of black women’s enslavement—from legal chattel slavery and social-political bondage to incarceration—provides the groundwork for the volume’s subsequent engagement of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic law, which demonstrates how slavery and its concomitant assignment and rationalization of embodied inferiority has been primarily cultivated by sacred texts. In her essay, for example, Sheila Briggs explicitly connects religious belief and dehumanizing practices; she ingeniously links religious textual interpretation with the sexual violence of early Christian gladiatorial practices in ancient amphitheaters.In parts 5 and 6, the volume reintroduces the substance of slavery’s legacies by way of a historical survey that connects enslavement across social contexts. In linking Debra Blumenthal’s discussion of slavery in late medieval Spain and Catherine Clinton’s analysis of the racial hypocrisies of Thomas Jefferson and Strom Thurmond to the problem of the Bible and the oppression it yields for sexual minorities as uncovered by Sylvester Johnson, Brooten exposes the vast and prevailing scope of slavery that affects all of us—women and girls, men and boys, sexual minorities, and even those who dare to fall in love across racial boundaries. In parts 7 and 8, Frances Smith Foster and Dwight Hopkins directly engage the “herstories” of black women who are marked by the legacies of slavery and yet who have consistently resisted in creative and effective ways (271). [End Page 237]Undoubtedly, this volume is a critical contribution to the field insofar as it uncovers an enduring social issue that continues to influence how we engage each other across differences of race, gender, class, and sexuality. The breadth of its disciplinary scope proves to be overwhelming at times. Nonetheless, Brooten’s constructive method serves well to emphasize the titanic complexity of enslavement and the challenge of its demolition.Eboni Marshall TurmanDuke Divinity SchoolCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies Edited by Bernadette J. BrootenEboni Marshall TurmanBeyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies EDITED BY BERNADETTE J. BROOTEN New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 352 pp. $30.00In her introduction to this edited collection of essays, Bernadette Brooten asserts that religion has long been complicit in the construction and practice of the logic of human enslavement. She provocatively claims (...) that religion and the racial and sexual norms that emerge from religious inquiry have historically [End Page 236] designated women and other bodies that defy white male normativity as inherently “slaveable.” She further contends that the religious and sexual legacies of slavery are not relegated to a moment in time, now past and gone. Rather, contemporary society is the heir of a flesh-and-blood hierarchy that continues to shape its “social values, religious thought, and economic realities” (3). The remnants of enslavement persist among human communities not only as a lived reality that, as Mende Nazer suggests in the epilogue, continues to threaten the lives and life chances of poor women and children throughout the world, but also as a blood memory—a recollection that runs so deep into the social fabric of our theopolitical worlds that in spite of slavery’s superficial obscurity, it remains as the pulse of human everydayness, lurking beneath the surface of daily exchanges.The insidious legacies of slavery that emerge from bigoted God-talk promote dehumanizing racial-sexual stereotypes, dictate the quality of marriage and intimate relationships, corrupt and exploit sexual expression, and drive the development of public policy and law in ways that disproportionately marginalize and disempower women and girls. Consequently, this volume proposes resistance and calls readers to communal action that renounces slavery in all its forms.In parts 2, 3, and 4, the essays detail the racial, religious, and sexual character of slavery by focusing on the experience of black women’s oppression in America. This focus on the varieties of black women’s enslavement—from legal chattel slavery and social-political bondage to incarceration—provides the groundwork for the volume’s subsequent engagement of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic law, which demonstrates how slavery and its concomitant assignment and rationalization of embodied inferiority has been primarily cultivated by sacred texts. In her essay, for example, Sheila Briggs explicitly connects religious belief and dehumanizing practices; she ingeniously links religious textual interpretation with the sexual violence of early Christian gladiatorial practices in ancient amphitheaters.In parts 5 and 6, the volume reintroduces the substance of slavery’s legacies by way of a historical survey that connects enslavement across social contexts. In linking Debra Blumenthal’s discussion of slavery in late medieval Spain and Catherine Clinton’s analysis of the racial hypocrisies of Thomas Jefferson and Strom Thurmond to the problem of the Bible and the oppression it yields for sexual minorities as uncovered by Sylvester Johnson, Brooten exposes the vast and prevailing scope of slavery that affects all of us—women and girls, men and boys, sexual minorities, and even those who dare to fall in love across racial boundaries. In parts 7 and 8, Frances Smith Foster and Dwight Hopkins directly engage the “herstories” of black women who are marked by the legacies of slavery and yet who have consistently resisted in creative and effective ways (271). [End Page 237]Undoubtedly, this volume is a critical contribution to the field insofar as it uncovers an enduring social issue that continues to influence how we engage each other across differences of race, gender, class, and sexuality. The breadth of its disciplinary scope proves to be overwhelming at times. Nonetheless, Brooten’s constructive method serves well to emphasize the titanic complexity of enslavement and the challenge of its demolition.Eboni Marshall TurmanDuke Divinity SchoolCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Historical Justice and Memory highlights the global movement for historical justice—acknowledging and redressing historic wrongs—as one of the most significant moral and social developments of our times. Such historic wrongs include acts of genocide, slavery, systems of apartheid, the systematic persecution of presumed enemies of the state, colonialism, and the oppression of or discrimination against ethnic or religious minorities. The historical justice movement has inspired the spread of truth and reconciliation processes around the world and has pushed governments to (...) make reparations and apologies for past wrongs. It has changed the public understanding of justice and the role of memory. In this book, leading scholars in philosophy, history, political science, and semiotics offer new essays that discuss and assess these momentous global developments. They evaluate the strength and weaknesses of the movement, its accomplishments and failings, its philosophical assumptions and social preconditions, and its prospects for the future. (shrink)

The broad fields of ethical reflection on racialization, racial justice, black liberation theology, and queer theology of color must come to terms with the year 2016, which can be framed on one side with the Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other side with a presidential election cycle in which racism and racial justice played particularly salient roles. Against this backdrop, this book discussion looks at recent literature on racial justice asking three questions. How does historical consciousness shape contemporary (...) ethical thought on racial justice? In what ways do the intersectionalities of gender and sexuality, immigration and transnationality, class, and contemporary culture present particular challenges and new possibilities? And how do the ethical frameworks of religious traditions contribute to the development of public theology for racial justice? The conclusion considers how religious ethics concerned with racial justice does harm or contributes to religiously grounded responses to racial injustice. Reflection on these questions points to the need for ongoing engagement with the black experience—broadly construed and within the context of multiple intersections—in the United States and globally in ethical analysis. However, this in turn makes particular and critical demands on how it is that we are to both teach and read religious ethics and political theology at our institutions, as well as in the churches. (shrink)

The paper links higher education reforms and welfare states reforms in postcommunist Central European countries. It links current higher education debates (and reform pressures) and public sector debates (and reform pressures), stressing the importance of communist-era legacies in both areas. It refers to existing typologies of both higher education governance and welfare state regimes and concludes that the lack of the inclusion of Central Europe in any of them is a serious theoretical drawback in comparative social research. The region should (...) still, after more than two decades of transition and heavy international policy advising, be viewed as a “laboratory of social experimentation”. It is still too risky to suggest generalizations about how Central European higher education and welfare systems fit existing typologies. Consequently, the “transition” period is by no means over: it is over in terms of politics and economics but not in terms of social arrangements. Both higher education and welfare states should be viewed as “work in progress”: permanently under reform pressures, and with unclear future. (shrink)

Interactions with teachers and peers are critical for children’s social, behavioral, and academic development in the classroom context. However, these two types of interpersonal interactions in the classroom are usually pursued via separate lines of inquiries. The current study bridges these two areas of research to examine the way in which teachers influence child-perceived peer social support and peer victimization for 2,678 children within 183 classrooms in preschool through grade three. Two levels of teacher influence are considered, namely teacher-child closeness (...) and conflict relationships at the child-level, and teacher management of interpersonal interactions at the classroom-level. Results of multilevel regression models showed that teacher-child closeness was associated with the growth of child-perceived peer social support from fall to spring, whereas teacher-child conflict and teachers’ behavior management practices were associated with the change in child-perceived peer victimization across the academic year. These associations were unique and above and beyond the influence of children’s actual peer social interactions, including reciprocal friendships and the collective classroom reputation of peer victimization. Collectively, findings highlight the multi-faceted teacher roles in shaping children’s perceptions of their peer social experiences during the earliest years of schooling. (shrink)

Over the past generation, forgiveness has entered the political sphere in countries all over the globe that are addressing the past injustices of war, dictatorship, genocide, and the maltreatment of native peoples. Among the international community, however, the practice is controversial, criticized as unjust for burdening victims and foregoing deserved punishment. This essay argues that forgiveness is not contrary to justice but rather reflective of it if justice means restoration of right relationship, a concept embedded in the scriptures and traditions (...) of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Conceived of in this way, forgiveness can avoid the potential injustices with which it is charged and contribute positively to the reconstruction of political orders. (shrink)

This article provides an exposition of restorative justice ethics, briefly explaining how and why its relational constitution enables it to comprise a theory of justice. I then describe how that relational constitution permits it to overlap, and work in tandem, with a wide range of religious and philosophical traditions. Numerous writings in religion and peacebuilding explore the roles that restorative justice has played in transitional justice contexts (Tutu 2000, Abu-Nimer 2001, de Gruchy 2002, Biggar 2003, Walker 2004, Villa-Vicencio (...) 2009). Less examined are cases in which restorative justice aims to provide a sustainable alternative to justice institutions and systems that generate substantial systemic injustices—what peace studies scholars describe as the inter-lacing of structural, cultural, and direct forms of violence (Springs 2015). In part two, then, I make the case that intervening in, and countering, structural and cultural violence, and systemic injustices, is conceptually intrinsic to restorative justice. Moreover, this opens possibilities for restorative justice to present sustainable alternatives to—and work to transform— structural violence occurring in retributive justice systems. Restorative justice can uniquely intervene in these ways, I argue, because of the form of moral and spiritual association its relational constitution engenders. As a test case, I briefly examine its capacity to intervene in the justice system that perhaps leads the world in the levels of structural and cultural violence—the United States. (shrink)

This book is the product of a major British Academy Symposium held in 2007 to mark the centenary of the birth of H.L.A. Hart, the most important legal philosopher and one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century. -/- The book brings together contributions from seventeen of the world's foremost legal and political philosophers who explore the many subjects in which Hart produced influential work. Each essay engages in an original analysis of philosophical problems that were (...) tackled by Hart, some essays including extended critical discussions of his major works: The Concept of Law, Punishment and Responsibility, Causation in the Law and Law, Liberty and Morality. All the main topics of Hart's philosophical writings are featured: general jurisprudence and legal positivism; criminal responsibility and punishment; theories of rights; toleration and liberty; theories of justice; and causation in the law. (shrink)

RESUMEN Contra el esencialismo de las concepciones de la justicia social como desarrollo, se sostiene que los bienes se configuran siempre en relaciones recíprocas, nunca de manera objetiva e impersonal. El núcleo deontológico de la moral reside en la crítica de las formas de actuary reposa en una ontología natural, mientras que el amplio conjunto de creencias normativas que llamamos ética se basa en la crítica de los bienes y presupone una ontología dialéctica. Revelar que toda cosa buena es ambivalente, (...) es la forma ética -y antigua- de reflexión práctica. La formación de bienes, fines y valores razonables acontece en el terreno de los intercambios recíprocos. ABSTRACT Against the essentialism of the conceptions of social justice as development, the article argues that goods are always shaped by reciprocal relations and never in an objective and impersonal manner. The deontological core of morality resides in the critique of the ways of acting grounded in a natural ontology, while the broad set of normative beliefs that we call ethics is based on the critique of goods and presupposes a dialectical ontology. Revealing that any good thing is ambivalent is the ethical -and ancient- form of practical reflection. The formation of reasonable goods, ends, and values takes place in the field of reciprocal interchange. (shrink)

The government of Rwanda has pursued reconciliation with great determination in the belief that it is the only moral alternative to post-genocide social challenges. In Rwanda, communities must be mobilised and reshaped for social, political and economic reconstruction. This creates a rather delicate situation. Among other strategies, the state has turned to the concepts of confession and forgiveness which have deep religious roots, and systematised them both at the individual and community or state level in order to bring about (...) reconciliation, justice, social cohesion and ultimately economic development. In view of these strategies and challenges, some of the important questions are: Does forgiveness restore victims and empower them to heal their communities? What empirical evidence exists that religiously inspired justice and reconciliation processes after mass political violence make a difference? In what areas might the understanding of religious thought and activity towards transitional justice be deepened? These questions provide the backdrop against which I examine the case of post-genocide Rwanda in this article. A hermeneutic interpretative analysis is used to situate the phenomena of forgiveness, confession and social transformation within the specific context of post-conflict societies. (shrink)

In the introductory chapter of this book I firstly argue that the contemporary debate on justice focuses exclusively on matters of justice pertinent to nearly just societies; in the second place, I suggest that radically unjust societies generate problems of justice that cannot be solved by the naive application of current theories of justice. It follows that these problems of justice for unjust societies demand to be discussed in their own right. -/- In what follows, just such an attempt will (...) be made to extend the scope of the contemporary debate on justice by developing a theory of justice for a radically unjust society. The chapters seek to remedy the several deficiencies of the contemporary debate on justice. -/- Thus, in Chapter Two suggestions will be made on how to identify injustice so that people can learn to see their experiences of suffering, degradation, humiliation, and oppression in terms of justice and injustice. In Chapter Three a standpoint will be developed on the relation between universal and particular elements in a theory of justice. Chapter Four serves two functions that are intertwined and cannot be easily separated. It functions first as a guide for making the second transition involved in the identification of injustice: to articulate theoretically the experiences of injustice. The second function is to provide a method for the design, construction, and justification of a theory of justice for a specific society. -/- In Chapter Five the relation between considerations of justice and forms of political action for the transformation of injustice into justice will be explored. Chapter Six then investigates the possible role that cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious pluralism has to play in theorizing about justice, and it asks how justice can be secured for every person in such a society. In the concluding section of Chapter Six the need for an ongoing dialogue between members of a political community is emphasized as the best way for settling disputes on matters of justice. (shrink)

What are the moral obligations of participants and bystanders during—and in the wake of –a conflict? How have theoretical understandings of justice, peace and responsibility changed in the face of contemporary realities of war? Drawing on the work of leading scholars in the fields of philosophy, political theory, international law, religious studies and peace studies, the collection significantly advances current literature on war, justice and post-conflict reconciliation. Contributors address some of the most pressing issues of international and civil conflict, (...) including the tension between attributing individual and collective responsibility for the wrongs of war, the trade-offs made between the search for truth and demands for justice, and the conceptual intricacies of coming to understand just what is meant by ‘peace’ and ‘conflict.’ Individual essays also address concrete topics including the international criminal court, reparations, truces, political apologies, truth commissions and criminal trials, with an eye to contemporary examples from conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and North and South America.​. (shrink)

In Liberia, much debate has surrounded the truth and reconciliation commission both in the challenges that it faced during its operational stage as well as in the issues surrounding the release and content of its report. This article will critically examine the establishment, proceedings, and findings of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in order to draw conclusions regarding what lessons can be learned, what could have been done to make the commission more effective, and how we can learn from (...) this example in applying transitional justice mechanisms for future African conflicts. (shrink)

COVID-19 is a new type of coronavirus that has spread all over the world and has caused a global epidemic that affected all parts of society. Healthcare professionals that are involved in the diagnosis, treatment, and care of patients diagnosed with coronavirus have been under a heavy burden both physically and psychologically during the fight against this disease. Articles published on protecting the mental health of healthcare professionals during the epidemic have stated that healthcare professionals should be supported to prevent (...) the negative effects of the epidemic on them. This new situation requires developing appropriate strategies for coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the given heavy burden by healthcare professionals. Therefore, the determination of effective approaches for the protection of mental health of healthcare professionals and increasing their protective factors, such as psychological resilience, has got great importance. Positive religious coping contents can be seen among the protective factors that affect the psychological resilience of healthcare professionals. Positive religious coping behaviors, such as refuge in Allah, praying, and reading Qur'an, not only provides a spiritual strength against the troubles of life but also provides a sense of control, peace, and security. This research aims to examine the relationship between religious coping and psychological resilience in healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethical approval for this research was obtained from Atatürk University Social and Human Science Ethics Committee (12.04.2021 dated and 88656144-000.E.2100103436 numbered). Descriptive research and correlational methods were used in the study. The population of the research consists of personnel working in health facilities operating throughout the country. The sample consists of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, midwives, and other health workers working in these health institutions. The Snowball sampling method was used in this study. For this aim, a Google Forms was established and 293 health workers in more than 40 provinces have filled this form. Personal Information Form, Religious Coping Scale, and Brief Psychological Resilience Scale were used as data collection tools. These data collection tools were used to determine whether positive and negative religious coping and psychological resilience differs according to gender and age. In addition to the above-mentioned aim, the relationship between positive and negative religious coping and resilience was examined in this study. T-test and ANOVA were applied in the analysis of demographic variables. Correlation and regression analysis were used to test the relationship between the variables. Findings obtained from this study have revealed that the levels of religious coping and psychological resilience of healthcare professionals differ according to their demographic characteristics. Results have shown that while there is no significant difference between women and men in terms of using positive religious coping methods, men use negative religious coping methods more frequently than women. Results have also revealed that positive coping methods are used more frequently as age increases and psychological resilience increased with age. Correlation analysis has shown that there is a significant relationship between positive religious coping and psychological resilience. Results of regression analysis have shown that positive religious coping is a significant predictor of psychological resilience. This result shows that positive religious coping is an important variable that affects psychological resilience. Results have suggested that there is a need to develop a program with religious/spiritual content that can help healthcare professionals to overcome this difficult process more easily by increasing their psychological resilience. Results obtained from this study may not only contribute to other rehabilitative studies that can be carried out for healthcare professionals during and after the pandemic but also provide scientific data for possible academic studies on this subject. (shrink)