This contribution focuses on Andreas Reckwitz’s considerations on phenomena of ‘exhausted self-realization’ and ‘disappointment’ in The Society of Singularities, as well as in his follow-up volume, The End of Illusions. Under discussion is the range of analytical distinctions that tend to come into play in this area between what one might call a generally primordial concept of self-realization and more derivative articulations of the concept that exhibit various aspects of instrumentalization—variously termed ‘self-maximization’ or ‘self-optimization’. The paper argues that while Reckwitz’s (...) work offers great resources for an understanding of how and why ‘self-realization’ so frequently appears to take on an instrumentalizing character in late-modern social behaviour, the extent to which his work attributes this tendency to a wholly immanent cultural-cognitive logic of lifestyle singularization is open to criticism. The reasons must also be sought from within the more directly economic contexts of diminished material security and solidarity typical of contemporary societies shaped by neoliberal economic governance orders at the level of policy. (shrink)

Research on meaningful work has not embraced a shared definition of what it is, in part because many researchers and laypersons agree that it means different things to different people. However, subjective and social accounts of meaningful work have limited practical value to help people pursue it and to help scholars study it. The account of meaningful work advanced in this paper is inherently normative. It recognizes the relevance of subjective experience and social agreement to appraisals of meaningfulness but considers (...) them conceptually incomplete and practically limited. According to this normative account, meaningful work should be meaningful to oneself and to others and is also meaningful independent of them. It sets forth grounds for evaluating some work to be more meaningful than other work, asserting the possibility that one could be mistaken about the meaningfulness of one’s work. While it thus proscribes some claims to meaningful work, it also opens up potential new avenues of inquiry into, among other things, self-aggrandizing and harmful work that is experienced as meaningful, morally valuable work that is not experienced as meaningful, and the distinction between experienced and normative meaningfulness. (shrink)

En este artículo se reflexiona sobre los derechos sociales, que son considerados derechos fundamentales y un prerrequisito para la integración política y la autonomía de los ciudadanos. Por tanto, ya se les considere derechos o prerrequisitos para el ejercicio de los derechos, la exclusión del acceso efectivo a ciertos servicios básicos implica una reducción de la ciudadanía como estatus civil y político. Además, la globalización económica ha producido una fuerte restricción en la aplicación estatal de las políticas sociales.

Durkheim and his followers alerted us to the role of collective representations such as funerals, processions and parades in pre-literate societies. These classic studies, elegant and detailed, have stood the test of time. Goffman has asked whether these events, along with memory and tradition, produce social solidarity in the twenty-first century. Perhaps social solidarity is enacted by such events, rather than reflecting norms, values, and beliefs. If so, how is this new kind of solidarity accomplished over the course of these (...) events? We have few close studies of these modern public events, other than Warner’s classic, the Living and the Dead, and Bellah’s ideas, via Rousseau, of the role of “civic religion.” These ideas are inadequately articulated, given an ethnographic warrant to link structure and function. This paper begins with a description of a funeral of a police officer in 1974, compares this with a police funeral in 2011, and addresses two questions: how are they different? And what do these collective representations tell us about modernity? Are police funerals different from others in the public sphere? The paper uses a semiotic analysis of funerals, police and public, as a window into the features of modern celebrations and processions. Given the relevant codes used to analyze the processions, the differences are salient. The contrast between these processions and their role in social integration in modernity raises the need for future research. (shrink)

Sociologists generally agree that history affects or conditions moral belief, but the relationship is still only vaguely understood. Using a case study of the appearance of social justice beliefs in Victorian-era Britain, this article develops an explanation of the link between history and morality by applying field theory to capture the historical genesis of a field. A moral way of evaluating poverty and inequality developed slowly over the course of the nineteenth century in Britain, with a trajectory extending back to (...) Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population and moving forward to the Fabians, the Settlement Movement, and other social reformers at the end of the nineteenth century. Drawing from field theory, I argue that social justice beliefs emerged during this time through the genesis of moral universalism as a distinct mode of experience. Several recognizable moral beliefs appeared in the process, including “equality of opportunity,” “equality of reward,” “character,” and “effort,” “ability,” and “duty” as forms of merit (among others). I argue for treating moral beliefs as historical and relational entities that are situated and dated by the conditions marking their appearance in a field. As I conclude, this lends the sociology of morality to a critical moral reflexivity instead of moral relativism or moral realism. (shrink)

The authors of Habits of the Heart charge that America is losing the institutions that help “to create the kind of person who could sustain a connection to a wider political community and thus ultimately support the maintenance of free institutions.” Bellah fears that “individualism may have grown cancerous – that it may be destroying those social integuments that Tocqueville saw as moderating its more destructive potentials, that it may be threatening the survival of freedom itself.” Proponents of the liberal (...) free market order should, I will argue, take seriously the concerns that motivate Bellah and company: citizens of a liberal regime cannot live by exchanges alone. Liberal constitutionalism depends upon a certain level and quality of citizen virtue. But while the need for virtue is often neglected by liberal theorists, it is far from clear that the actual workings of liberal institutions have drastically undermined virtue in the way Bellah's dire account suggests. That analysis serves, moreover, as the springboard for a radically transformist argument that seeks, not so much to elevate and shape, but to transcend and deny, the self-interestedness that the free market exercises. Having argued against Bellah's analysis and prescriptions, I shall attempt to show how the phenomena he describes are open to an interpretation that is happier from the point of view of a concern with virtue. I shall end by using Tocqueville to suggest that combining liberal capitalism with intermediate associations like voluntary groups and state and local government helps elevate and shape self-interest, promoting a citizenry capable of and insistent upon liberal self-government. (shrink)

Epistemology, I will argue, is of crucial importance to the sociology of knowledge— not just by way of definition of the phenomenon under study, but also because approaches to the sociology of knowledge rely on too-often implicit epistemological stances. I will make this argument through a series of categorizations: first, I will classify the field of epistemology into its three main forms; second, I will classify the sociology of knowledge into epistemological categories; third, I will classify the sociology of science (...) into these same categories. All the while, I will be making an argument for an empirical epistemology and "agnostic" studies of knowledge. This article does not cover the field of epistemology exhaustively, but tries to offer an orderly overview of classic positions for the benefit of social scientists. (shrink)

One can extrapolate from the art of language instruction to discover methods applicable across the disciplines in higher education. The paradigm presented by language instruction is applicable throughout the arts and sciences. If cultivated—and there are institutional pressures working against it—such an art can impact the languages and codes of the individual disciplines so as to advance the research mission of scholars in those fields; it can also favor the interrelationships between the disciplines. How the student learns another language (L2) (...) is comparable to the process of learning a scientific discipline. (shrink)

One can extrapolate from the art of language instruction to discover methods applicable across the disciplines in higher education. The paradigm presented by language instruction is applicable throughout the arts and sciences. If cultivated—and there are institutional pressures working against it—such an art can impact the languages and codes of the individual disciplines so as to advance the research mission of scholars in those fields; it can also favor the interrelationships between the disciplines. How the student learns another language (L2) (...) is comparable to the process of learning a scientific discipline. (shrink)

Feeling that they must aim for certainty in their claims, each side presents its version of reality, monologically, simply for acceptance or rejection by the other. In this form of argumentation, one individualistically formulated, systematic, finished version is pitted (in an essentially Neo-Darwinian struggle) against another. By its very nature, such a form of rational argumentation prevents the construction of a shared version of things; it is not dialogical. In attempting to recover what has been rendered ’rationally-invisible‘ by our modern (...) modes of (monological) reasoning, I first explore the "structures of passion and feeling" (Raymond Williams) embodied in the ways in which people in a community interrelate themselves. Attention to such structures illuminates the nature of argument in a novel, dialogical, light: those who share in such structures do not share in a system of foundational principles or a logical framework, but in a "living tradition" (MacIntyre) or "living ideology" (Billig et al.). Bakhtin‘s concept of the utterance is then explored as the basic unit for understand dialogical communication and argument within such living traditions. (shrink)

This paper argues that political civility is actually an illusionistic ideal and that, as such, realism counsels that we acknowledge both its promise and peril. Political civility is, I will argue, a tension-filled ideal. We have good normative reasons to strive for and encourage more civil political interactions, as they model our acknowledgement of others as equal citizens and facilitate high-quality democratic problem-solving. But we must simultaneously be attuned to civility’s limitations, its possible pernicious side-effects, and its potential for strategic (...) manipulation and oppressive abuse, particularly in contemporary, pluralistic and heterogeneous societies. (shrink)

This study investigates the impact of job satisfaction and personal values on the work orientation of accounting practitioners in China. Satisfaction with work varies across individuals and how individuals view work (i.e., work orientation) may depend not only on satisfaction with various facets of their work but also on their beliefs and values. We used the questionnaire from Wrzesniewski et al. (J Res Pers 31, 21–33, 1997) to measure work orientation. Job satisfaction was measured by the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) (...) developed by Smith et al. (The Measurement of Satisfaction in Work and Retirement. Rand McNally, Skokie, IL, 1969) and personal values were measured by the Schwartz Value Questionnaire Survey (Schwartz, Adv Exp Social Psychol 25, 1–65, 1992). Our sample consisted of 370 accounting practitioners from six major cities in China; 268 were females and 102 were males. We found that 41.9 % of the respondents viewed their work as a career, 37.6 % as a calling and 20.5 % as a job and that job satisfaction to be the highest among the “calling” group and lowest among the “job” group. There were no significant gender differences in the work orientation of the respondents. Our study showed that the value types achievement and hedonism and satisfaction with promotion were significant predictors of the career orientation, while the value type benevolence and satisfaction with the present job were predictors of the calling orientation. Dissatisfaction with work was the major predictor of the job orientation. Furthermore, length of employment was positively associated with both the calling and job orientation, but negatively associated with the career orientation. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility is a tortured concept. We review the current state of the art across a number of academic disciplines, from accounting to management to theology. In a world that is increasingly global and pluralistic, progress in our understanding of CSR must include theorizing around the micro-level processes practicing managers engage in when allocating resources toward social initiatives, as well as refined measurement of the outcomes of those initiatives on stakeholder and shareholder interests. Scholarship must also account for the (...) influence of diverse, and even mal-adaptive, stakeholders as well as more fully incorporate non-Western philosophical and economic perspectives. Based on this review, we pose five questions that scholars from each of these disciplines should address as the CSR field moves forward. We hope our questions provoke deeper thinking and greater rigor and attention to detail in this important area of business research. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility is a tortured concept. We review the current state of the art across a number of academic disciplines, from accounting to management to theology. In a world that is increasingly global and pluralistic, progress in our understanding of CSR must include theorizing around the micro-level processes practicing managers engage in when allocating resources toward social initiatives, as well as refined measurement of the outcomes of those initiatives on stakeholder and shareholder interests. Scholarship must also account for the (...) influence of diverse, and even maladaptive, stakeholders as well as more fully incorporate non-Western philosophical and economic perspectives. Based on this review, we pose five questions that scholars from each of these disciplines should address as the CSR field moves forward. We hope our questions provoke deeper thinking and greater rigor and attention to detail in this important area of business research. (shrink)

In this essay I critique two influential accounts of rational autonomy in common schooling that conceive liberalism as an ideal form of life, and I offer an alternative approach to democratic education that views liberal theory as concerned with coexistence among rival ways of living. This view places moral agency, not rational autonomy, at the heart of schooling in liberal societies—a moral agency grounded in initiation into dynamic traditions that enable self-definition and are accompanied by exposure to life-paths other than (...) one’s own. This alternative challenges the tendency in large diverse democracies (such as those of the US and the UK) to prefer common to particularistic schools, thereby placing many types of faith and secular schools on a more equal footing and providing moral justification for education in the national cultures of small liberal republics (such as Denmark, Israel and Lithuania) that maintain special relationships to particular groups while acknowledging the rights of all citizens. I call this approach the pedagogy of difference. (shrink)

In this essay I critique two influential accounts of rational autonomy in common schooling that conceive liberalism as an ideal form of life, and I offer an alternative approach to democratic education that views liberal theory as concerned with coexistence among rival ways of living. This view places moral agency, not rational autonomy, at the heart of schooling in liberal societies—a moral agency grounded in initiation into dynamic traditions that enable self-definition and are accompanied by exposure to life-paths other than (...) one’s own. This alternative challenges the tendency in large diverse democracies (such as those of the US and the UK) to prefer common to particularistic schools, thereby placing many types of faith and secular schools on a more equal footing and providing moral justification for education in the national cultures of small liberal republics (such as Denmark, Israel and Lithuania) that maintain special relationships to particular groups while acknowledging the rights of all citizens. I call this approach the pedagogy of difference. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to argue in favor of a private employer’s right to discriminate amongst job applicants on any basis he chooses, and this certainly includes unlawful characteristics such as race, sex, national origin, sexual preference, religion, etc. John Locke and many after him have argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property or the pursuit of happiness. In this view, law should be confined to protecting these rights and be limited to prohibiting other (...) people from transgressing those rights. The law should not hinder an employer’s ability to discriminate, any more than it should compel people to marry against their wishes. These laws generally emerge from a moral perspective that people think should be imposed on everyone else. But those who don’t welcome those morals are in effect being coerced to abide by them against their will; this is unethical. Finally, it will be argued that the free market has mechanisms by which discrimination will, be rendered powerless to harm its victims. (shrink)

This article introduces a new scale to measure executive servant leadership, situating the need for this scale within the context of ethical leadership and its impacts on followers, organizations and the greater society. The literature on servant leadership is reviewed and servant leadership is compared to other concepts that share dimensions of ethical leadership (e.g., transformational, authentic, and spiritual leadership). Next, the Executive Servant Leadership Scale (ESLS) is introduced, and its contributions and limitations discussed. We conclude with an agenda for (...) future research, describing ways the measure can be used to test hypotheses about organizational moral climate, ethical organizational culture, corporate responsibility, and institutional theory. (shrink)

The vast majority of contributions to the literature on spirituality in nursing make extravagant claims about transcendence, eternity, the numinous, higher powers, higher levels of existence, invisible forces, cosmic unity, the essence of humanity, or other supernatural concepts. Typically, these assertions are made without the support of argument or evidence; and, as a consequence, alternative ways of theorizing ‘spirituality’ have been closed off, while the lack of consistent scholarship has turned the topic into a metaphysical backwater. In this paper, I (...) adopt a different premise, rejecting unsupported claims, and surveying the ‘spirituality’ terrain from a naturalistic and reductionist perspective. I argue that, if we rid ourselves of non‐naturalistic assumptions, we will discover theoretical and clinical resources in health psychology, social psychology, neuropsychology, and pharmacopsychology – resources which confirm that it is possible to conceptualize the study of existential concerns, and how health professionals might respond to them, in a properly scientific manner. In order to illustrate the potential usefulness of these resources, I will take palliative care as an example. (shrink)

A major criticism of contemporary business education centers on its failure to help business students achieve sufficient educational breath, particularly with regard to the external environment of business. The service-learning movement offers business faculty an excellent opportunity to address this deficiency. By developing curricular projects linked to community needs, faculty can further their students' technical skills while helping them simultaneously develop greater inter-personal, inter-cultural, and ethical sensitivity.

Cultural models of health, illness, and moral reasoning are receiving increasing attention in bioethics scholarship. Drawing upon research tools from medical and cultural anthropology, numerous researchers explore cultural variations in attitudes toward truth telling, informed consent, pain relief, and planning for end-of-life care. However, culture should not simply be equated with ethnicity. Rather, the concept of culture can serve as an heuristic device at various levels of analysis. In addition to considering how participation in particular ethnic groups and religious traditions (...) can shape moral reasoning, bioethicists need to consider processes of socialization into professional cultures, organizational cultures, national civic culture, and transnational culture. From the local world of the community clinic or oncology unit to the transnational workings of human rights agencies, attentiveness to the concept of culture can illuminate how patients, family members, and health care providers interpret illness, healing, and moral obligations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Different concepts of democracy are considered as they reflect deep problems in modem democratic societies such as the lack of participation by citizens, the loss of a sense of community, and excessive individualism. Three models of teaching, the executive, the therapist, and the liberationist, are then explored with regard to what students may learn about being a member of a democratic society when they are treated differently by such teachers. It is argued that while each model has its positive (...) and negative influences, the liberationist approach has the best potential for meeting some of the deficiencies of participatory forms of democratic life. (shrink)

Different concepts of democracy are considered as they reflect deep problems in modem democratic societies such as the lack of participation by citizens, the loss of a sense of community, and excessive individualism. Three models of teaching, the executive, the therapist, and the liberationist, are then explored with regard to what students may learn about being a member of a democratic society when they are treated differently by such teachers. It is argued that while each model has its positive and (...) negative influences, the liberationist approach has the best potential for meeting some of the deficiencies of participatory forms of democratic life. (shrink)

We argue that the stakeholder perspective on corporate social responsibility is in the process of being enlarged. Due to the process of institutional isomorphism, corporations are increasingly adopting organizational features designed to promote proactivity over mere reactivity in their stakeholder relationships. We identify two sources of pressure promoting the emergence of the proactive corporation -- stakeholder activism and the recognition of the social embeddedness of the economy. The final section describes four organizational design dimensions being installed by the more proactive (...) corporations today -- cooperation, participation, negotiation, and direct anticipation. (shrink)

Anthropologists have long wrestled with their impact upon the people they study. Historically, the discipline has served and subverted colonial agendas, but views itself traditionally as an advocate for the disempowered and as an instrument of public policy. Marketing is now among the pre-eminent institutions of cultural stability and change at work on the planet. Currently, ethnography is assuming a growing importance in the marketer’s effort to influence the accommodation and resistance of consumers to the neocolonial forces of globalization. The (...) ethical consequences of market-oriented ethnography are explored in this essay. (shrink)

The vast majority of contributions to the literature on spirituality in nursing make extravagant claims about transcendence, eternity, the numinous, higher powers, higher levels of existence, invisible forces, cosmic unity, the essence of humanity, or other supernatural concepts. Typically, these assertions are made without the support of argument or evidence; and, as a consequence, alternative ways of theorizing ‘spirituality’ have been closed off, while the lack of consistent scholarship has turned the topic into a metaphysical backwater. In this paper, I (...) adopt a different premise, rejecting unsupported claims, and surveying the ‘spirituality’ terrain from a naturalistic and reductionist perspective. I argue that, if we rid ourselves of non‐naturalistic assumptions, we will discover theoretical and clinical resources in health psychology, social psychology, neuropsychology, and pharmacopsychology – resources which confirm that it is possible to conceptualize the study of existential concerns, and how health professionals might respond to them, in a properly scientific manner. In order to illustrate the potential usefulness of these resources, I will take palliative care as an example. (shrink)

Today''s headlines suggest that economic criteria alone is the basis for business decision-making. This paper argues that while profitability is a legitimate end of business, it must be moderated by ethical considerations. But can business be both successfuland ethical? Practical examples highlight individuals who chose profitability over ethical responsibility and those who chose and continue to choose both. The authors propose that there is an ethical person profile. Corporate managers can resolve the profits vs ethics dilemma by modeling ethical behavior.

This article draws upon 100 years of writings which are referred to as the Catholic Social Tradition (CST). Using this tradition as a guide, the nature of work is explored along with the principles and virtues which vitalize the deepest dimension of work — how it affects the dignity of the human person. It develops five operational ethical principles which can be applied to questions of workplace ethics. Organizational policies and programs that seem consistent with CST are also discussed.

Using practical formalism a deontological ethical analysis of peer relations in organizations is developed. This analysis is composed of two types of duties derived from Kant's Categorical Imperative: negative duties to refrain from the use of peers and positive duties to provide help and assistance. The conditions under which these duties pertain are specified through the development of examples and conceptual distinctions. A number of implications are then discussed.

This paper considers the question of the role of teachers with respect to knowledge, an issue that has been reopened as a consequence of the widespread interest in outcomes-based education. Proponents of an outcomes-based education are sometimes guilty of defending a role for teachers that is limited to facilitation. Against this rather passive understanding of the role of teachers, the paper defends a notion of teachers as critical mediators of knowledge. The role of teachers as mediators of knowledge is developed (...) from debates in epistemology about knowledge and truth. The role of teachers as socio-cultural critics, analogous to the role of art critics, is developed from debates around knowledge, values and the politics of curriculum design. These two roles are synthesised into teachers as critical mediators of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the individual manager making difficult decisions within the context of the organization in which he or she is a member. It proposes a method for examining the interplay of individual and corporate value systems, offering a value congruence model. Hypotheses are generated concerning the varying nature of the value conflicts faced by managers. These are then evaluated based upon interview data from a cross-section of managers in two organizations. The impact of differing organizational value systems is (...) discussed, as well as the implications of the study for research in this area. (shrink)

This paper falls under the rubric of the sociology of knowledge, which bridges the gap between phenomenological philosophy and the human sciences. It presents an empirical investigation of the communicative construction of psychotherapeutic reality. I examine therapeutic talk and psychotherapists' reconstructions of the transition from state socialism in Germany in 1989. In both instances I show how psychotherapists' commonly shared interpretative conventions and rules of reasoning produce typical accounts. The first part of the paper shows how certain interpretative conventions and (...) rules of reasoning organize therapeutic talk and interaction in general. The second part focuses on how the interpretative conventions typical of therapy also inform psychotherapists' interpretations of the transition from state socialism. (shrink)

Interest in teaching business ethics classes on college campuses has increased dramatically during the past decade. In the United States, virtually all graduate and undergraduate business programs teach business ethics in some form. While current pedagogy relies primarily on factual recounting of actual workplace incidents and actual and hypothetical case studies, calls for multidisciplinary approaches to teaching business ethics have not yet produced significant pedagogical change. We propose the use of fiction (novels, dramas, and short stories) to enrich current teaching (...) materials. This paper illustrates the tremendous power of stories which deal with ethical dilemmas in business to illuminate moral issues in ways that lead to a clearer understanding of ethical theory. The fiction cited in this paper is all drawn from American literature. It seems likely that similar sources could be found in the literature of other countries. (shrink)

The current revival of communitarian thinking, alongside public journalism as its journalistic counterpart, is one response to thefractures that characterize modern society. I identifyfive symptoms/causes ofthefractured world. I then show, briefly, some contrasts between the communitarian ideal and that of liberal democracy. The conclusion calls for journalists to undertake the task of reworking our basic conceptual framework in ways that avoid the twin extreme, and naive anthropologies of individualism and collectivism in favor o f a communitarian view based upon acknowledgment (...) of human interdependence. (shrink)

Over the last twenty years the organization of business activity appears to have shifted from an emphasis on bureaucratic organizations toward an emphasis on market structures. Economic self-interest has acquired a new social legitimacy, and the force of traditional moral authorities has waned. In these circumstances the work of Emile Durkheim on the problematics of business ethics and the impact of a culture of self-interest on the stability of society, work that has hitherto been neglected by the business ethics community, (...) acquires a new relevance. In this paper we review Durkheim''s problematization of business ethics, establish its relevance for the contemporary world, and use it to develop an empirical research agenda for the contemporary sociology of business ethics. (shrink)

The Puritan ethic is conventionally interpreted as a set of individualistic values that encourage a degree of self-interest inimical to the good of organizations and society. A closer reading of original Puritan moralists reveals a different ethic. Puritan moralists simultaneously legitimated economic individualism while urging individuals to work for the common good. They contrasted self-interest and the common good, which they understood to be the sinful and moral ends, respectively, of economic individualism. This polarity can be found in all the (...) details of their moral system, including the Puritan understanding of vocation, economic virtues, property rights, contracts, wealth and poverty, market prices and interest, and the proper economic role of government. The efforts of contemporary ethics to confront the problem of self-interest in business organizations and society would be enriched by a rediscovery of the Puritan understanding of self as a fundamental problem for any individualistic value system. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenological account of the writing of a young woman diagnosed with schizophrenia. The method of interpretation is to put ourselves in the place of the author drawing upon a combination of sympathy, reason, common-sense, experience, and an intersubjective world, common to us all (Schutz, 1945: 536). The result is the recognition of the person as also capable of putting herself in the place of others so as to understand their behavior. This role-taking success identifies the limits (...) of the current sociological understanding of insanity's significance in social interaction as an instance of role-taking failure (Rosenberg, 1992).The very appearance of a piece of writing often permits one to recognize the presence of schizophrenia. The use of space may be quite bizarre. The varying margins betray the writer's changing mood. The letter may start at the bottom or side of the paper or very close to the top .. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the nature and contents of 'civil ethics' and the source of the binding force of its obligations. This ethics should provide the criteria for evaluating the moral validity of social, legal and morally valid law. The article starts with observing that in morally pluralist Western societies civil ethics already exists, and has gradually started to play the role of guiding the law. It is argued that civil ethics should not be conceived as 'civic morals' which (...) is in fact rather 'state ethics', nor as 'public ethics' which is said to reach its perfection when it becomes law, nor as ethics applicable primarily to the basic structure of a society (political liberalism), but instead as a citizens' ethics. Subsequently the paper attempts to show what the contents of this ethics are, and which ethical theory would be able to ground its obligations. (shrink)

In response to Charles Taylor's book "Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity," Becker defends the Western view of ethical conceptions based on our unique identity, reasoning, and historical heritage.

Most scholars in political theory and sociology have dismissed journalism as an institutional force in the public sphere, in part because of journalists' largely self-defined and curiously marginalized role as a mere transmission apparatus for traditional news. The authors advocate a philosophy ofpublic journalism faithful to the commons, in which newspapers become a site for public dialogue accessible to all citizens, where positions that could not or would not be explored elsewhere are advanced, argued, assessed, and acted upon.

: Our stereotypes of maternity and paternity as manifest in the history of philosophy and psychoanalysis interfere with the ability to imagine loving relationships. The associations of maternity with antisocial nature and paternity with disembodied cul-ture are inadequate to set up primary love relationships. Analyzing the conflicts in these associations, I reformulate the maternal body as social and lawful, and I re-formulate the paternal function as embodied, which enables imagining our primary relationships as loving.

Our stereotypes of maternity and paternity as manifest in the history of philosophy and psychoanalysis interfere with the ability to imagine loving relationships. The associations of maternity with antisocial nature and paternity with disembodied culture are inadequate to set up primary love relationships. Analyzing the conflicts in these associations, I reformulate the maternal body as social and lawful, and I reformulate the paternal function as embodied, which enables imagining our primary relationships as loving.

After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...) practical reason or their stunted emotions that are at fault. The evidence supports both explanations. I conclude with an overview of the debate concerning whether they are morally or legally responsible for their actions. (shrink)