Gustavo Gutiérrez develops an account of human action or praxis that I—borrowing the language of Charles Taylor—label expressivist. Human action must be understood as expressing an underlying potential or impulse that only becomes real through expression in action. Gutiérrez's expressivism is fundamental to his view of the relationship between faith and love, his notion of three dimensions of liberation/salvation, and his understanding of the fundamental option as a yes or no in response to grace. Moreover, it supports a valuable approach (...) to community as defined more by shared actions than a shared tradition or narrative. The final section briefly indicates two limitations to Gutiérrez's vision—especially with regard to the conception of community—and suggests the direction that a constructive appropriation of his thought might take. (shrink)

Focusing on the production of lists of evaluative criteria has oversimplified our judgments of qualitative research. On the one hand, aspirations for global criteria applicable to “qualitative” or “interpretive” research have glossed over crucial analytic differences among specific types of inquiry. On the other hand, the methodological concern with appropriate ways of acquiring trustworthy data has led to an overly narrow proceduralism. I suggest that rational evaluations of analytic worth require the delineation of species of analytic tasks and the exercise (...) of genre-appropriate judgments, to determine what constitutes explanatory, interpretive, or explicatory adequacy. I focus on the parameters of judgment for interpretations and explications because their analytic differences have not yet been made distinct in qualitative research. (shrink)

: The key concept is "vertigo of secularization." It relates to the fears that societies experience when understanding the need to ground their political orders as separated from religion. The erosion of values produces vertigos around the world. We need to understand better these kinds of processes because only by doing so can we keep that fear and violence from taking precedence over the hard working tasks of building up a global political community.

This article proposes a more culturalist and variegated conception of the individual than that presented by individualization theorists. Inspired by the approach of the individual advocated by Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and John Meyers, it first outlines the general script of the individual-as-actor that informs modern individualism as well as the generic characteristics that are routinely attributed to persons such as agency and free will. It subsequently reconstructs three predominant interpretations of this general script, i.e. utilitarian, moral and expressive individualism. (...) For each variant, the intellectual genesis and overall definition of the institutionalization in specific societal domains and the dominant articulations in social theory are briefly presented. With this threefold distinction, the aim is to synthesize the extensive literature on individualism and to show the sociological strengths of approaching subjectivity in terms of institutionalized scripts. (shrink)

In his impressive and wide?ranging new book, Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor argues that modern moral philosophy, at least within the Anglo?American tradition, . offers a ?cramped? view of morality. Taylor attributes this problem to three distinctive features of contemporary moral theory ? its commitment to procedural rather than substantive rationality, its preference for basic reasons rather than qualitative distinctions, and its belief in the priority of the right over the good. According to Taylor, the result of these features (...) is that contemporary moral theories cannot explain the nature of a worthwhile life, or the grounds for moral respect. Indeed, they render these questions unintelligible. I argue that Taylor has misunderstood the basic structure of most modern moral theory, which seeks to relocate, rather than suppress, these important questions. In particular, he fails to note the difference between general and specific conceptions of the good, between procedures for assessing the good and specific outcomes of that procedure, and between society's enforcement of morality and an individual's voluntary compliance with morality. Each of these distinctions plays an important role in contemporary moral theory. Once they are made explicit, it is clear that many contemporary theorists operate with a more sophisticated account of moral sources than Taylor attributes to them. (shrink)

Although Roberto Unger is sometimes described as a communitarian critic of liberalism, his recent three‐volume work on Politics disavows the major tenets of contemporary communitarianism—for example, the “embedded self,” the critique of rights, the rejection of universalizing theory. Instead, Unger's aim is to criticize liberalism from the perspective of a “superliberalism"—a perspective which takes the original liberal desire to emancipate individuals from the chains of social custom and hierarchy and rids it of the stultifying economic and political institutions within which (...) liberals have sought to contain it. Three main components of Unger's theory are analyzed: the idea of “negative capability,” or the power of individuals to revise and transcend their social contexts; the idea of an “empowered democracy,” which seeks to open up all aspects of society to the collective exercise of negative capability; and the idea of “immunity rights,” which seek to protect individuals from the potential risks of radical democracy. I argue that all three underestimate the risks to individual liberty of the over‐politicization of social life. (shrink)

In this essay I endorse Gaffney’s paradoxical analysis that supports the right over the good, ‘horizontal commitments’ to teammates over ‘vertical loyalties’ to the cause of winning. However, I attempt to present two friendly amendments—by adding a second factor to the vertical element and by showing that a virtue ethics approach is needed in certain situations. I conclude that Gaffney’s deontological stance serves him well in the Hope Solo case, but might not be as effective in other circumstances.

In this article, the author problematizes the process of “humanizing education” in the era of perestroika and glasnost. Identifying herself as a “democratic socialist,” Kohli invites her Soviet colleagues to acknowledge the criticisms of liberal capitalism before they move headlong in that direction. In deconstructing such taken-for-granted concepts as individualism, democracy, market economy, and community, Kohli suggests that both the West and the East could benefit from re-visiting their respective revolutionary traditions at this crucial historical time.

Health care services increasingly face patient populations with high levels of ethnic and cultural diversity. Cultures are associated with distinctive ways of life; concepts of personhood; value systems; and visions of the good that affect illness experience, help seeking, and clinical decision-making. Cultural differences may impede access to health care, accurate diagnosis, and effective treatment. The clinical encounter, therefore, must recognize relevant cultural differences, negotiate common ground in terms of problem definition and potential solutions, accommodate differences that are associated with (...) good clinical outcomes, and manage irresolvable differences. Clinical attention to and respect for cultural difference (a) can provide experiences of recognition that increase trust in and commitment to the institutions of the larger society, (b) can help sustain a cultural community through recognition of its distinct language, knowledge, values, and healing practices, and (c) to the extent that it is institutionalized, can contribute to building a pluralistic civil society. (shrink)

As levels of trust decrease and the necessity for trust increase in our society, we are increasingly driven toward the untoward, even disastrous, outcomes of the prisoner's dilemma. Yet despite the growing evidence that (re)building conditions of trust is increasingly mandatory in our era, modern moral philosophy (by default) and the social sciences (implicitly) legitimize an instrumental rationality which is the root problem. The greatest danger is that as conditions of trust are rationalized away through the progressive institutionalization of an (...) instrumental rationality, we are driven towards the most virulent form of the prisoner's paradox — ethical relativism and its nihilistic consequences. (shrink)

While it is common to observe that our society and world are becoming increasingly complex and fast paced, most of our theories provide no bases upon which to develop appropriate strategies. The need for developing holistic strategies is becoming urgent in two related areas: major interactive technologies and morality.

This essay critically revisits Jiwei Ci’s prudential argument for political democracy in China from the very Tocquevillian standpoint on which Ci’s core theoretical argument is predicated. I argue that Ci’s underlying assumption and argument regarding the enabling conditions of democracy actually depart significantly from Tocqueville’s own view due to Ci’s overly positive understanding of equality of conditions as directly constitutive of a democratic society and his assumed causal connection between capitalist society and political democracy. After clarifying what Tocqueville meant by (...) equality of conditions and discussing his prudential remedy for the perils of democracy, I conclude by suggesting an alternative pragmatic and prudential justification for democracy in China that is more consistent with the Tocquevillian conception of democracy. (shrink)

As an advocate of ‘comparative political theory,’ Fred Dallmayr has long engaged with Confucianism with a new vision for democracy suitable in East Asia but little attention has been paid to his idea of Confucian democracy, which he presents as a specific mode of ethical or relational democracy. This paper investigates Dallmayr’s ethical vision of Confucian democracy, first, by articulating his postmodern reconceptualization of democracy in terms of post-humanism and, second, by examining his post-humanist reevaluation of Confucian virtue ethics as (...) a critical resource for ethical democracy. It argues that the ethical vision of Confucian democracy, though morally appealing, should not dismiss the important instrumental value of democracy as a political system and, rather, find a way to integrate democracy’s instrumental and intrinsic values in a way that can enhance the qualitative relationality between people, political agents, and the common good. (shrink)

Was Durkheim an apologist for the authoritarianism? Is the sociology founded upon his work incapable of critical perspective; and must it operate under the presumption that social agents, including sociologists themselves, are incapable of reflexivity? Certainly some have said so, but they may be wrong. In this essay, I address these questions in the light of Durkheim's revisionary sociology of morals. I elaborate on unfinished elements in Durkheim's abruptly concluded (because of his early and unexpected death) scholarship, pointing out Durkheim's (...) recognition that co-present moral spheres always exist in an organically complex society, and explaining how these co-present spheres obligate social agents to untether from any absolute moral affiliations. Ultimately, then, the argument shows how the solidarity/social-order relationship is transcended within Durkheim's sociology, even by Durkheim himself. (shrink)

The year 2012, in one sense, marks the 40th Anniversary of our Society, for it was in 1972 that John Lachs suggested to some of his colleagues interested in American Philosophy that they consider starting a new organization. The following year, this "American Philosophy" group held a symposium on "Possibilities for American Philosophy" at the Western Philosophy Association meeting. At that time the group's name was changed to "Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy," and in 1974 the first independent (...) annual meeting of the Society was held at Vanderbilt University.1The Society's name has stimulated contention for various reasons, but reflecting on forty years of this group, I want to say "we have come a .. (shrink)

Los efectos del individualismo en la participación política son aspectos tratados por Charles Taylor en su obra, preocupado porque ello está menguando el involucramiento de los individuos en el destino de la sociedad. Las personas se alejan de la sociedad sin percatarse que podrían estar camino a su autodestrucción, en tanto se forjen débiles frente al poder del Estado. Serán los actores estatales quienes aprovechen este escenario de desconexión para tomar decisiones que controlen esa “individualidad”. Ello podría estar beneficiando a (...) una clase política perversa – plagada de actores individualistas – que aprovecha estos espacios de indiferencia ciudadana para su favorecimiento. En ese sentido, Taylor desarrolla su “Teoría de los tres malestares de la Modernidad”, donde describe aspectos sobre el individualismo y la razón instrumental que han trascendido a los gobiernos por ser de suma importancia, aislando a los individuos de la sociedad y permitiendo que emerja el despotismo blando como un poder tutelar que deja a los ciudadanos indefensos frente al Estado, siendo la participación política su única manera de defenderse. (shrink)

Working in and around the ‘chain of command’: power relations among nursing staff in an urban nursing homeBy most accounts, the discipline of nursing enjoys considerable hegemony in US nursing homes. Not surprisingly, the ethos of this setting is influenced, in large part, by nursing’s value system. This ethos powerfully impacts both the residents who live in nursing homes and the staff who work there. Using ethnographic methods, this project explored power relations among nursing assistants and nurses in an urban (...) nursing home in the United States. Factors contributing to tensions among nursing staff were the stigma attached to nursing homes and those who work in them, as well as the long history of class conflict and power struggles within the discipline of nursing. The latter struggles, in turn, reflected nursing’s quest for professional status in the face of medicine’s hegemony over health‐care. Ultimately, these factors coalesced to produce a local work environment characterized by conflict — and by aides’ resistance to nurses’ domination. (shrink)

Abstract. In this essay, I describe my Cultural-Developmental Template Approach to moral psychology. This theory draws on my research with the Three Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity, and the work of many other scholars. The cultural-developmental synthesis suggests that the Ethic of Autonomy emerges early in people's psychological lives, and continues to hold some importance across the lifespan. But Autonomy is not alone. The Ethic of Community too emerges early and appears to increase in importance across the life course. (...) Then, it also seems that in most places and at most times, the Ethic of Divinity has found a voice—and in some traditions this ethic may become audible in adolescence. Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity, then, may have universal roots in the human condition. However, they are also clearly culturally and historically situated. Cultural communities—whether defined by religious, national, or other boundaries—vary in how they prioritize the three ethics and the extent to which they reinforce their development. (shrink)

Although transpersonal psychologies of self realization emphasize individual development, earlier shamanic traditions also showed a central societal aspect and group based consciousness. Indeed, many have understood the transpersonal movement as developing towards an abstract globalized neo-shamanism. That altered states of consciousness, whether as integrative realizations of the numinous or as dissociative “hypnoid” states, could be felt and shared collectively was a familiar concept to the first generation of sociologists, who saw all consciousness as social and dialogic in form. Durkheim, in (...) particular, foresaw a globalized spirituality of the future, his “cult of man,” in which modern individuation would progress to the point where all we would have in common for the collective representations of spiritual awareness would be our shared sense of human beingness. This view foreshadowed De Chardin, and is presented explicitly or implicitly in Jung, Gurdjieff, Heidegger, Maslow, and Almaas. The implications of a societal, collective face of transpersonalism for a future planetary spirituality are pursued in terms of both a global ecological consciousness and the potential transpersonal significance of SETI. (shrink)

We analyse solidarity as a mixture of social justice on the onehand and a set of cultural values and ascriptions on the otherhand. The latter defines the relevant sense of belonging togetherin a society. From a short analysis of the early stages of theDutch welfare state, we conclude that social responsibility wasoriginally based in religious and political associations. In theheyday of the welfare state, institutions such as sick funds,hospitals or nursing homes became financed collectively entirelyand became accessible to people of (...) all denominations. Solidaritywas transformed in a more general category, related to the statusof Dutch citizenship. Responsibility was transformed tocollective responsibility.Financial pressures on the Welfare State have resulted in adebate on choices in health care and in a number of systemreforms, so far relatively small. In the surrounding discourse,justice was linked to private responsibility. Both fromgovernment officials and from participants in the societaldebate, moralistic overtones could be heard concerning the threatof overburdening of the health care system by citizens.In this paper, we develop a concept of reflexive solidarity thatlinks elements of social justice to conceptualisations ofresponsibility that address policy makers and health careinstitutions as well as citizens, in their role of carereceivers. A short analysis of the phenomenon of personal budgetsin care services should prove that our concept of reflexivesolidarity is not empty. Linked to, but beyond the concept ofjustice, issues of social responsibility can be addressed withoutmoralistic overtones. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

_ Source: _Volume 39, Issue 2, pp 99 - 117 In a large sample of adult Americans, we examined trait narcissism among those who identify as nonreligious, traditionally religious, or “spiritual but not religious”. Our study reveals that: 1) those who identify as traditionally religious and those who identify as SBNR exhibit fairly similar levels of narcissism; 2) contrary to conventional wisdom, nonreligious Americans are lower in narcissism than religious/spiritual Americans ; and 3) higher levels of church attendance are not (...) associated with lower NPI scores, though higher levels of church attendance are associated with higher NPI scores in SBNR individuals. (shrink)

This research essay explores the ethical implications of the stewardship metaphor for journalists. A three?part examination of stewardship is undertaken: a philological survey of the Greek vocabularly, from which ?oikonomia?; (stewardship) has arisen; an elaboration of four ethical implications for journalist (journalists? incentive to serve, their delivery but not ownership of messages, their ambiguous authority, and their need for professional discipline); and two critical issues arising from the sterwardship metaphor (to define the master of the journalistic house as the long?term (...) public interest, and not the news media owners, and to define ?good stewardship as journalism that is contextually intelligible and socially constructive). The essay was written for a seminar taught by Dr. Edmund Lambeth. (shrink)

Ethical behavior — the conscious attempt to act in accordance with an individually-owned morality — is the product of an advanced stage of the maturing process. Three models of ethical growth derived from research in human development are applied to issues of business ethics.

This paper examines the political philosophy of Liberalism with particular focus on the principles of liberal neutrality and value pluralism. These principles, which are advocated by the most prominent contemporary liberal theorists mark a significant departure from classical liberalism and its monistic approach to seeking truth and the good. I argue that the shift to neutrality and pluralism have done a disservice to liberalism and that the cultivation of discrimination skills is needed to deal with the complex tasks of making (...) decisions intelligently and effectively. (shrink)

This article discusses the ordinary, the existentialist, and the virtue‐ethics senses of the word ‘authenticity’. The term ‘authentic’ in ordinary usage suggests the idea of being ‘original’ or ‘faithful to an original’, and its application implies being true to what someone (or something) truly is. It is important to see, however, that the philosopher who put this technical term on the map in existentialism, Martin Heidegger, used the word to refer to the human capacity to be fully human, not to (...) being true to one's unique inner nature. Authenticity might also be thought of as a virtue, and interesting questions arise whether such a virtue should be regarded primarily as a personal or as a social virtue. (shrink)

As software developers design artificial agents , they often have to wrestle with complex issues, issues that have philosophical and ethical importance. This paper addresses two key questions at the intersection of philosophy and technology: What is deception? And when is it permissible for the developer of a computer artifact to be deceptive in the artifact’s development? While exploring these questions from the perspective of a software developer, we examine the relationship of deception and trust. Are developers using deception to (...) gain our trust? Is trust generated through technological “enchantment” warranted? Next, we investigate more complex questions of how deception that involves AAs differs from deception that only involves humans. Finally, we analyze the role and responsibility of developers in trust situations that involve both humans and AAs. (shrink)

What is the relationship between natural science, social science, and religion? The dominant paradigm in contemporary social science is scientism, the attempt to apply the methods of natural science to the study of society. However, scientism is problematic: it rests on a conception of natural science that cannot be sustained. Natural scientific understanding emerges from an instrumental and objectifying relation to the world; it is oriented toward control and manipulation of the physical world. Social‐scientific understanding, by contrast, must begin with (...) a practical and meaningful relation to the world: it is oriented toward the mediation of values and objective possibilities in the social world. Social science is therefore a form of practical reason based on objective claims. But while social‐scientific understanding starts with interpretation, its possibilities by no means end there. In particular, by developing abstract and objectified models of society as a system, social science opens existing social organization to critical reflection. Religion, by contrast, is a form of speculative reason about ultimate values, based on subjective claims of religious experience. Social science nevertheless shares with religion an orientation toward values and concern with the “good life.”. (shrink)

Emile Durkheim's "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale," written in 1899 during the Dreyfus Affair in France, is introduced. The introduction summarizes the principal contributions that "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale" makes to the sociology of anti-Semitism, relates those contributions to Durkheim's broader theoretical assumptions and concerns, situates his analysis of anti-Semitism in its social and historical context, contrasts it to other analyses of anti-Semitism (Marxist and Zionist) that were prominent in Durkheim's time, indicates some of the revisions and additions that a fuller (...) and more complete Durkheimian theory of anti-Semitism would entail, and highlights the significance of Durkheim's ideas for the contemporary study of ethnic and racial antagonism. While noting the limitations of Durkheim's analysis, the introduction concludes that "Antis?mitisme et crise sociale" has sadly regained its relevance in the light of a revival of anti-Semitism at the turn of the millennium. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We explore the impact on employee attitudes of their perceptions of how others outside the organization are treated above and beyond the impact of how employees are directly treated by the organization. Results of a study of 827 employees in eighteen organizations show that employee perceptions of corporate social responsibility are positively related to organizational commitment with the relationship being partially mediated by work meaningfulness and perceived organizational support and job satisfaction with work meaningfulness partially mediating the relationship but not (...) POS. Moreover, in order to address limited micro-level research in CSR, we develop a measure of employee perceptions of CSR through four pilot studies. Employing a bifactor model, we find that social responsibility has an additional effect on employee attitudes beyond environmental responsibility, which we posit is due to the relational component of social responsibility. (shrink)

Modern societies have reconciled the dilemma between self-interest and caring for others by dividing women and men into different moral categories. Women have been expected to seek personal development by caring for others, while men care for others by sharing the rewards of their independent work achievements. Changes in work and family life have undermined this framework but have failed to offer a clear avenue for creating new resolutions. Instead, contradictory social changes have produced new moral dilemmas. Women must now (...) seek economic self-sufficiency even as they continue to bear responsibility for the care of others. Men can reject the obligation to provide for others, but they face new pressures to become more involved fathers and partners. Facing these dilemmas, young women and men must develop innovative moral strategies to renegotiate work-family conflicts and transform traditional views of gender, but persisting institutional obstacles thwart their emerging aspirations to balance personal autonomy with caring for others. To overcome these obstacles, we need to create more humane, less gendered theoretical and social frameworks for understanding and apportioning moral obligation. (shrink)

Abstract. Given that the conception of the person as an autonomous agent is a cultural construction, inquiry is directed to its potentials and shortcomings for cultural life. While such a conception contributes to sustaining the moral order, it also supports an individualist ideology and social divisiveness. As an alternative to the conception of moral autonomy, I explore the potentials of relational being, an orientation that views relational process (as opposed to individual agents) as the wellspring of all meaning. Such an (...) orientation sees all moral concepts and action as issuing from coordinated action. However, at the same time that relational process generates moral orders, so does it establish the grounds for “immorality” and social conflict, which undermines the relational process of creating moral order. Thus, a concept of “second-order morality” is advanced, which seeks to reestablish a more inclusive first-order morality. Responsibility for productive processes of relationship is invited. Recent innovations in dialogic practices lend themselves to relational responsibility. (shrink)

Jeffrey Alexander’s recent book on cultural sociology argues that sociologists must grant the realm of ideas autonomy to determine behavior, unencumbered by interference from instrumental or material factors. He criticizes the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as “weak” for failing to give autonomy to culture by reducing it to self-interested behavior that immediately reflects class position. However, Alexander’s arguments seriously distort and misstate Bourdieu’s theory, which provides for the relative autonomy of culture through the concepts of habitus and field. Because habitus (...) is a set of durable dispositions conditioned by past structures, it may contradict the changed structures of the present. Further, the influence of the habitus is always mediated by the structure and strategies of the field of contest in which it is deployed, so that the same habitus may motivate different actions in different circumstances. However, Alexander is correct to argue that in Bourdieu’s theory culture generally serves to reproduce, not contradict social structures. Yet Bourdieu addresses this and other problems in his later work, in which he argues for the existence of certain cultural universals transcending particular structures. (shrink)

The automobile as an object of consumption, carrying meanings and identities, has evolved through three ages during the 20th century, each characterized by a peculiar cultural logic. In the age of class distinction, the car served as a status symbol of the sort theorized by Pierre Bourdieu. It marked out differences between classes, while simultaneously misrecognizing and legitimating their origins. In the age of mass individuality, the car was a reified consumer commodity, as postulated by the theory of the Frankfurt (...) School. It served to obscure qualitative class differences underneath the illusion of mass individuality, in which consumers varied by the quantity of desired automotive traits they could afford. In the age of subcultural difference, the car expressed the different identities of lifestyle groups in a leveled and pluralized consumer culture, as theorized by postmodernism. The extension of the cultural logic of each of these automotive ages ultimately contradicted its configuration, and pushed the car forward to the next age. (shrink)

An examination of leading textbooks suggests the predominance of a principle-based model in the teaching of business ethics. The model assumes that by teaching students the rudiments of ethical reasoning and ethical theory, we can hope to create rational, independent, autonomous managers who will apply such theory to the many quandary situations of the corporate world. This paper challenges these assumptions by asking the following questions: 1. Is the acquisition of principle-based ethical theory unproblematic? 2. What is the transferability of (...) classroom learning to the business context? 3. Is it appropriate to consider complementary models in the teaching of business ethics? The last question is approached from the perspective of virtues-based ethics, from the insights of feminist ethics, and from a culturally grounded orientation to moral values and norms. (shrink)