Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become indispensable in modern business discourse; yet identifying and defining what CSR means is open to contest. Although such contestation is not uncommon with concepts found in the social sciences, for CSR it presents some difficulty for theoretical and empirical analysis, especially with regards to verifying that diverse application of the concept is consistent or concomitant. On the other hand, it seems unfeasible that the diversity of issues addressed under the CSR umbrella would yield to (...) a singular universal definition. Gallie, an eminent philosophical scholar, proposed the essentially contested concepts (ECC) theory in 1956 to address concepts that by their very nature engender perpetual disputes. He pointed out that there are certain concepts which by their very nature are inevitably contested and prescribed seven criteria for evaluating such concepts. This article examines these criteria to discover if CSR is an essentially contested concept and in that case, to construe if such a change in perception will resolve the definitional crisis. The analysis suggests that CSR is an ECC and this explains the potential for several conceptions of CSR, however, it does not totally obviate the need for a definition of its core or common reference point, if only to ensure that the contestants are dealing with an identical subject matter. (shrink)

In the contemporary literature of educational philosophy and theory, it is almost routinely assumed or claimed that 'education' is a 'contested' concept: that is, it is held that education is invested – as it were, 'all the way down' - with socially constructed interests and values that are liable to diverge in different contexts to the point of mutual opposition. It is also often alleged that post-war analytical philosophers of education such as R. S. Peters failed to appreciate such contestability (...) in seeking a single unified account of the concept of education. Following a brief re-visitation of Peters' analytical influences and approach and some consideration of recent 'post-analytical' criticisms of analytical educational philosophy on precisely this score, it is argued that much of the case for the so-called 'contestability' of education rests on a confusion of different concepts with different senses of 'education' that proper observance of well-tried methods of conceptual analysis easily enables us to avoid. (shrink)

Although the notion of an essentially contested concept may shed light on the logic of disputes over the proper application of some key political terms, it nevertheless plays no genuine role in explaining the intractability of these disputes. The notion of an essentially contested concept is defended against some influential criticisms, showing how it is possible for one conception of an essentially contested concept to be justifiably regarded as superior to other competing conceptions. Two possible answers are distinguished to the (...) question of why disputes over essentially contested concepts should be regarded as inevitable, but neither provides us with a plausible explanation for why they are so intractable. Disagreements over the proper use of key political concepts are better explained by features of moral and political discourse, such as the short reach of ?intellectual authority? and the fact that consensus is not one of its primary aims, in conjunction with empirical hypotheses from the social sciences, rather than by essential contestedness theses. (shrink)

Taylor, Sandel, Walzer, and MacIntyre waver between granting the community authority over the individual and limiting this authority so severely that communitarianism becomes a dead letter. The reason for this vacillation can be found in the aspiration of each theorist to base liberal values‐equality and liberty—on particularism. Communitarians compound liberal formalism by adding to the liberal goal, individual autonomy, the equally abstract aim of grounding autonomy in a communally shared identity. Far from returning political theory to substantive considerations of the (...) good, communitarianism legitimizes really existing liberal politics—the politics of the nation‐state. (shrink)

This paper considers the proposal, associated with the CriticalLegal Studies movement (CLS) that the language of rights shouldbe replaced with the language of needs. It argues that thelanguage of needs is no less contestable, and has an even lesssecure relation to the idea of social duty than the idea ofrights. The paper rejects the notion that rights are usuallynegative claims on others – claims to their forbearance –and argues that rights can be understood perfectly well as adiscourse in which affirmative (...) claims are articulated. Moreover,rights are naturally associated with the idea of a moral system– a well-thought-through set of demands, in which potentialconflicts have been addressed and resolved. The concept ofneed does not have such systemic implications. (shrink)

This dissertation argues that there is an agreed upon commonsense view of violence, but beyond this view, definitions for kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally, politically ideological, given that the political itself is an essentially contested concept defined in relation to ideologies that oppose one another. The first chapter outlines definitions for a commonsense view of violence produced by Greene and Brennan. This chapter argues that there are incontestable instances of violence that are almost universally agreed upon, such (...) as when an adult intentionally smashes a child’s head against a table, purposefully causing harm. It is also claimed that, because political, ideological distinctions between kinds of violence arise from the creation of moral equivalences to the commonsense view of violence, political ideology is the source of disagreement. The second chapter argues that the concept of violence and of the political are essentially contested concepts. Gallie’s criteria for what counts as an essentially contested concept are utilized in order to argue that violence is an essentially contested concept at the level of the political, though not at the level of the commonsense view of violence. In fact, the paradigmatic cases that the commonsense view of violence pertains to serve as the core cases that are then interpreted as kinds of violence at the ideological level. To define violence as altogether wrong, or to define kinds of violence as acceptable and others as wrong is itself a politically ideological move to make, such as when liberalism defines its own uses of violence as justified and legitimate, and its enemy’s violence as unjustifiable and illegitimate. The World Health Organization and Bufacchi’s definitions for violence are presented, as are the definition for terroristic violence defined by Nagel. Erlenbusch’s critique of a liberal view, such as that of Nagel and the World Health Organization, is addressed as a reflection on the fact that, beyond the commonsense view of violence, violence is an essentially contested concept for which an ideologically, politically non-neutral definition is unlikely. The third chapter outlines numerous definitions produced by various philosophers, historians, and theorists, such as Machiavelli, Arendt, Hobbes, Kant, Treitschke, Weber, Bakunin, Sorel, Žižek, and Benjamin. The definitions produced by each demonstrates that person’s political ideological assumptions. Their definitions demonstrate an ongoing disagreement, in the sense of Rancière’s formulation for what counts as a disagreement in that each theorist defines kinds of violence under the yoke of their own political ideology. They all might agree that a single act is violent, under the commonsense view of violence, but they disagree concerning what kind of violence it is. So, though they may point to the same events and actions as examples of violence, what they mean fundamentally differs, and this means that they disagree. Their disagreement arises due to their respective political ideologies. This disagreement shows that there is no neutral justification for the neutrality of a state, particularly if a neutral state must defend itself. The state is instead defined in historically contextual terms of how the state relates to kinds of violence, and the distinctions between kinds of violence are not themselves politically, ideologically neutral. So, the concept of violence, beyond the commonsense view, is an essentially contested concept for which a non-neutral definition is unlikely. Beyond the commonsense view, political ideology is inextricably bound up within distinctions between kinds of violence. The fourth chapter then examines arguments on the question of whether nonviolence counts as a kind of violence. If distinctions between kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally defined, and nonviolence is defined as distinct from violence, then it follows that nonviolence is an essentially contested concept for which no non-neutral definition is possible, at least beyond a commonsense view of nonviolence. A commonsense view of nonviolence is defined as the assumption that nonviolence is not violent in the way that the commonsense view defines violence. That is, nonviolence occurs when there is no action or event that most people would define as a violent one. Definitions for nonviolence, civil disobedience, nonviolent political actions, and nonviolent direct actions are then outlined. These definitions aim at showing that the doctrine of nonviolence does not merely refer to nonviolent acts, but to a strategy that is a means to defeating violence. Given that what counts as the nonviolence that defeats violence is ideologically a matter of disagreement, nonviolence, in this sense, can count as a kind of violence. The fifth chapter concludes, raising questions concerning how violence can be valued, the degree to which a state cannot neutrally justify its neutrality, and the degree to which, beyond the commonsense view of violence, there ever could be agreement concerning what counts as kinds of violence. 1 In this dissertation, I draw on a number of ideas/passages that appeared earlier in my paper “The Efficacy of Scapegoating and Revolutionary Violence," in Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions: A Journal of the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies, ed. William Sweet, 10(2014), 203-219. I am grateful to the editors of the journal for permission to draw on this material here. (shrink)

I argue that, in analysing the structure and development of moral traditions, MacIntyre relies primarily on Kuhn's model of scientific tradition, rather than on Lakatos' model. I unpack three foci of Kuhn's conception of the sciences, namely: the ‘crisis’ conception of scientific development, what I call the ‘systematic conception’ of scientific paradigms, and the view that successive paradigms are incommensurable. I then show that these three foci are integrated into MacIntyre's account of the development of moral traditions with a surprising (...) degree of faithfulness to Kuhn. And crucially, I argue against the overall cogency of his account, given the disparities I pinpoint between scientific and moral traditions. My overall critique is, however, fundamentally friendly, since nothing I have to say invalidates the very notion of a moral tradition, and all I am calling for are less problematic construals of that notion. (shrink)

The article defends ubuntu against the assault by Enslin and Horsthemke (Comp Educ 40(4):545–558, 2004 ). It challenges claims that the Africanist/Afrocentrist project, in which the philosophy of ubuntu is central, faces numerous problems, involves substantial political, moral, epistemological and educational errors, and should therefore not be the basis for education for democratic citizenship in the South African context. The article finds coincidence between some of the values implicit in ubuntu and some of the values that are enshrined in the (...) constitution of South Africa and that on that basis argues that ubuntu has the potential to serve as a moral theory and a public policy. The educational upshot of this article’s argument is that South Africa’s educational policy framework not only places a high premium on ubuntu, which it conceives as human dignity, but it also requires the schooling system to promote ubuntu-oriented attributes and dispositions among the learners. The article finds similarities between ubuntu and bildung, whose key advocates, among others was German scholar and intellectual Wilhelm von Humboldt. It argues that it would be ethnocentric, and indeed silly to suggest that the ubuntu ethic of caring and sharing is uniquely African when some of the values which it seeks to promote can also be traced in various Eurasian philosophies. (shrink)

Philip Snelders; An Essentially Contesting Philosopher: a reply to John Wilson, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 17–22.

Since Gallie introduced the notion of essentially contested concepts, it has given rise to considerable debate and confusion. The aim of this paper is to bring clarity to these debates by offering a critical reconstruction of the notion of essential contestedness. I argue that we should understand essentially contestable concepts as concepts that refer to ideals or to concepts and phenomena that can only be fully understood in light of ideals and that are, as a consequence, open to pervasive contestation. (...) Moreover, some concepts are second-order essentially contested: it may be a matter of ongoing dispute as to whether they should be regarded as essentially contested. The concept of law is an example. Some authors argue that it is ideal-oriented, whereas others claim it is not. This insight that ‘law’ is a second-order essentially contested concept may explain some of the disagreements between legal positivism and its various opponents. (shrink)

This paper argues that a certain way of thinking about the function of the biobank—about what it does and is constructed for as a social institution aimed at ‘some good’—can and should play a substantial role in an effective biobanking ethic. It first exemplifies an ‘institution shaped gap’ in the current field of biobanking ethics. Next the biobank is conceptualized as a social institution that is apt for a certain kind of purposive functional definition such that we know it by (...) what it does and what it is designed to do. This purpose is then characterized further as essentially incorporating the human goods the institution is designed to serve, such that it plays a useful and indispensible role in how it should operate, i.e. in the ethics and governance of biobanking. Finally the ethical scope and limitations of such a theory is clarified by a discussion of some theoretical objections and suggested practical examples of its application. (shrink)

Patrick D Walsh; Open and Loaded Uses of ‘Education’—and objectivism, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–35, https://.

Anthony Kronman’s 1980 article “Contract Law and Distributive Justice” has become something of a classic in the philosophy of private law. Kronman argued that any theory of contract which relied upon voluntariness was necessarily concerned with distributive justice, since voluntariness was itself a distributive notion. The argument targeted libertarian accounts of contract. Given the distributive nature of voluntariness, the claim went, libertarians could not give an adequate account of contract without violating their own injunction against appeal to the “fair division (...) of wealth among the members of society”(472). It is easy to see why Kronman’s article attracted so much attention. The idea that voluntariness isnotdistributive is central not just to libertarianism but to liberalism generally. Kronman’s critique, though targeting a not terribly common species of liberalism, threatens the genus itself. (shrink)

Using the lens of conceptual history, we analyze the evolution of the term digital commons since it first came to be publicly used. In particular, we track down how the meaning of the term digital commons was influenced after its emergence by a new modulation of the term commons developed from neo-Marxist coordinates. Exploring the way in which this neo-Marxist way of thinking the commons emerged after the economic crisis of 2008 thanks to the discursive interventions of a couple of (...) authors more or less linked to the Midnight Notes Collective, we subsequently analyze the degree of penetration of this new conception of the commons in the realm of the digital commons. As we conclude, the disparate reception of this conception on the way different authors think and theorize the digital commons confirms the essentially contested nature of this particular concept. (shrink)

Debates about the role of the university in a democratic society have been constant throughout history; but current discussions seem to be of a different order for several reasons. First, universit...

It is shown here that injustices due to racial discrimination are best identified in light of the deleterious effects they have upon their victims, rather than the beliefs and attitudes of their perpetrators. For among participants who cooperate clandestinely to bring about racial injustice there may be broad disagreement about what it is they are doing collectively, and why; or they may disagree in principle about whether what they are doing is morally right. I employ the notion of ‘nomotropic’ behaviour (...) to replace the oversimplified notion of ‘rule-following’ in order to explain how duplicity and hypocrisy fall shy of being regarded as irrational in social climates where implicit norms reinforce racial privileging while explicit norms denounce it. Further, examining the ‘collective utility’ of dogmatic beliefs and norms comprising part of the social architecture that covertly reinforces racial injustice may help to explain why it often seems to make so little diffe... (shrink)

El estudio científico-social del conflicto armado colombiano se ha convertido en un escenario más del conflicto basado en fuertes desacuerdos teóricos y filosóficos. Esto se debe a las inherentes dimensiones normativas e ideológicas de las ciencias sociales, las cuales afectan los marcos teóricos y los métodos científicos empleados y, por ende, la manera en que se perciben los “hechos” a analizar. Incide también en el tipo de explicaciones y variables que serán relevantes y las conclusiones a que se llega. El (...) artículo sostiene que las tesis filosóficas de Alasdair MacIntyre pueden explicar y elucidar este problema además de apuntar hacia una solución. (shrink)

This contribution explores correctives to several errors that Thomas Nagel seems to presuppose in his seminal defence of scepticism about global justice. I rely on lessons learned and conventions surviving in West African contemporary social and moral contexts, where people engage as a matter of course in divergent, historically antagonistic cultural and political traditions. On this view, global justice is a work in progress—not a fixed univocal formula but an on-going collaborative effort, a project in perpetual renovation and inter-cultural reconsideration (...) by successive generations which presupposes a diversity of values and ways of sanctifying human life. I consider ways in which an ethics of care, as suggested by Virginia Held, might have been anticipated by the time-honoured norms of governance and political culture surviving in complex African polities, cultures which have withstood the corrosion of external colonialism since early modernity. How might iconically African, universally fundamental moral notions of decency and fairness find their way back into the global marketplace of diplomatic discourse and economic policy design?To demonstrate the need to navigate towards some consensus within the diversity of indigenous concepts associated with justice and good governance in Africa, I discuss the fiasco displayed in a widely celebrated proposal for exercising globally principles of justice in the Western liberal political tradition applied to remedy Africans’ notorious resource curse. (shrink)

This study examines the contestability of “relevance” as an abstract construction with no fixed meaning when applied, and questions its usage in the research quality debate. It finds that different research agendas and approaches have their own idiosyncratic logic and that any logic has its own criteria for assessing quality which cannot be applied to assess the quality of others. This is illustrated by delineating practitioner-led research from academic-led research and by comparing and contrasting research perspectives as examples. The research (...) quality debate becomes meaningless when it is limited to a singular research agenda or approach as in practice these are invariably combined. Having said this, however, every agenda and approach can be argued to be legitimate as potentially each can find what otherwise cannot be noticed. As a result, this study challenges the conventional unitarist wisdom that conceptualises knowledge as commodity, and suggests instead that heterogeneity, linked to tolerance and relative independence of means and mind, free from the control or influence of others to enable critical distance from context and status quo and facilitate judgement, is the key to those seeking a meaningful research quality debate that acknowledges tolerance of the diversity of knowledge, difference, contestation and struggle. Although such heterogeneity may at first appear to add confusion rather than clarity, without first looking at this heterogeneity it is not possible to develop a dialogue, in the context of the present neo-liberal post-political drift that emphasises consensus, the annulment of dissensus and diverts attention from relationships of power, through which a positive contribution can be made to the research quality debate. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show how W.B. Gallie’s proposal on the essential contestability of political concepts ended up calling into question the very notion of essential contestability proposed by this author. In spite of this, we consider that such a notion can still be a contribution to the history of concepts if it is complemented by some aspects of Hegel’s philosophy, located in his Science of Logic, which can provide a foundation for such contestability from a self-referred (...) negativity open to semantic displacements, which allows us to receive Gallie’s proposal without having to accept all his theoretical commitments, radicalizing his proposal and providing some useful indications for the history of political concepts. (shrink)

The concept of the ‘stakeholder’ has become central to business, yet there is no common consensus as to what the concept of a stakeholder means, with hundreds of different published definitions suggested. Whilst every concept is liable to be contested, for stakeholder research, this is problematic for both theoretical and empirical analysis. This article explores whether this lack of consensus is conceptual confusion, which would benefit from further debate to try to reach a higher degree of elucidation, or whether the (...) stakeholder concept is essentially contested, rendering the quest to seek a singular definition unfeasible. The theory of essentially contested concepts was proposed by Gallie (Proc Aristot Soc 56:167–198, 1956 ). The seven criteria Gallie prescribes for evaluating essentially contested concepts are applied to the stakeholder concept. The analysis suggests that this concept is an essentially contested concept and this explains the degree of definitional variation. (shrink)

Patrick D Walsh; Open and Loaded Uses of ‘Education’—and objectivism, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–35, https://.

Philip Snelders; An Essentially Contesting Philosopher: a reply to John Wilson, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 17–22.

The notions 'worldview' and 'social identity' are examined to consider whether they contribute substantively to causal sequences or networks or thought clusters that result in group acts executed intentionally. ... Three proposed explanaitons of sectarian conflict or ethnic violence are analysed as examples of theories that causally link intenitonal group behaivour to the worldviews and social identities of the individual agents directly involved. But as will be shown, it is not a priori features of worldivews and identities as such, but (...) historically specific facts and contingent circumstances that need to be examined in order to explain group-motivated behaviour. Reference to worldviews and identities detract from adequate explanation. (shrink)

MacIntyre’s earlier work and concern with social science enquiry not only exposes its limits, but also provides an insight into how its knowledge claims have been put to ideological use. He maintains that the institutional embodiment of these ideological ideas is the bureaucratic manager who has had a negative role to play in social structures because managerialism revolves around a notable absence, or at least marginalisation of conflict since the nature of rational debate and conflict is unpredictable and unmanageable, and (...) hence would seriously undermine the perception trying to be projected of a competent technocrat in control of their organisation. MacIntyre, in lamenting the place of contemporary universities in society, highlights how most universities have become business corporations and irremediably fragmented and now serve purposes so alien and foreign from their initial conception as sites of constrained mutual rational debate and conflict. As a result, MacIntyre’s account of how managerial authority is justified in bureaucratic institutions and its social role and character is scathing and particularly apt for explaining the malaise of contemporary universities. In order to overcome this malaise, I want to struggle against the corporatisation of universities by revitalising and extending upon MacIntyre’s argument that a university is set up for constrained disagreement and imposed participation in conflict, and also highlight the importance of reason or wisdom and its development because it enables us to see the interconnectedness and interrelationship between different forms of knowledge that can lead us to truth and of the good. (shrink)