How can reformational philosophy help us reconceptualise the notion of security? In the field of Security Studies, theoreticalismsabound, each of them rooted in a different philosophical tradition. One of these approaches, “securitization theory”, portrays security in connection to five “sectors” that seem to reflect some of the basic aspects of the cosmos analysed by reformational philosophy. I consider the potential of this theory in an initial attempt to introduce a reformational approach to Security Studies. I also briefly consider some of (...) its shortcomings. Finally, I reflect on the basic elements of a reformational notion of security. At this stage I am not offering a new theory of security but merely beginning to sketch a new concept of security in light of reformational philosophy. (shrink)

In this essay I question the liberal faith in the efficacy and morality of citizenship education (CE) as it has been traditionally (and is still) practiced in most public state schools. In challenging institutionalized faith in CE, I also challenge liberal understandings of what it means to be a citizen, and how the social and political world of citizens is constituted. I interrogate CE as defended in the liberal tradition, with particular attention to Gutmann’s ‘conscious social reproduction’. I argue that (...) CE in practice does not operate on the bases of non-repression or non-discrimination, and has weak claims for legitimacy. In fact, CE in many forms reproduces social inequalities, and contributes to the expulsion of disadvantaged students from schools and from the ranks of recognized citizens. (shrink)

Two types of Judeo-Christian perspective stress the imperative to act to relieve suffering and transcend violence: liberation theology and the "religious humanitarian perspective." Both link ethics and action; both influence political debate.

It has been widely observed that virtue ethics, regarded as an ethics of the ancient, in contrast to deontology and consequentialism, seen as an ethics of the modern (Larmore 1996: 19–23), is experiencing an impressive revival and is becoming a strong rival to utilitarianism and deontology in the English-speaking world in the last a few decades. Despite this, it has been perceived as having an obvious weakness in comparison with its two major rivals. While both utilitarianism and deontology can at (...) the same time serve as an ethical theory, providing guidance for individual persons and a political philosophy, offering ways to structure social institutions, virtue ethics, as it is concerned with character traits of individual persons, seems to be ill-equipped to be politically useful. In recent years, some attempts have been made to develop the so-called virtue politics, but most of them, including my own (see Huang 2014: Chapter 5), are limited to arguing for the perfectionist view that the state has the obligation to do things to help its members develop their virtues, and so the focus is still on the character traits of individual persons. However important those attempts are, such a notion of virtue politics is clearly too narrow, unless one thinks that the only job the state is supposed to do is to cultivate its people’s virtues. Yet obviously the government has many other jobs to do such as making laws and social policies, many if not most of which are not for the purpose of making people virtuous. The question is then in what sense such laws and social policies are moral in general and just in particular. Utilitarianism and deontology have their ready answers in the light of utility or moral principles respectively. Can virtue ethics provide its own answer? This paper attempts to argue for an affirmative answer to this question from the Confucian point of view, as represented by Mencius. It does so with a focus on the virtue of justice, as it is a central concept in both virtue ethics and political philosophy. (shrink)

John Dewey was the foremost figure and public intellectual in early to mid-twentieth century American philosophy. He is the most academically cited Anglophone philosopher of the past century, and he is among the most cited Americans of any century. In this comprehensive volume spanning thirty-five chapters, leading scholars help researchers access particular aspects of Dewey’s thought, navigate the enormous and rapidly developing literature, and participate in current scholarship in light of prospects in key topical areas. Beginning with a framing essay (...) by Philip Kitcher calling for a transformation of philosophical research, contributors interpret, appraise, and critique Dewey’s philosophy under the following headings: Metaphysics; Epistemology, Science, Language, and Mind; Ethics, Law, and the Starting Point; Social and Political Philosophy, Race, and Feminist Philosophy; Philosophy of Education; Aesthetics; Instrumental Logic, Philosophy of Technology, and the Unfinished Project of Modernity; Dewey in Cross-Cultural Dialogue; The American Philosophical Tradition, the Social Sciences, and Religion; and Public Philosophy and Practical Ethics. (shrink)

This work seeks to honor Michael Novak’s contribution to sport ethics by returning to his seminal work, The Joy of Sports. Novak runs an alternate route in developing his ethic, drawing largely on the school of political realism, particularly the work of Reinhold Niebuhr. In so doing, he offers a distinctive lens through which to approach to the myriad ethical issues in sport, including those related to competition, violence, and engagement in foul play. The essay outlines four core dimensions of (...) realism within Novak’s larger corpus in order to elucidate their unfolding within The Joy of Sports. It also contributes to an understanding of how political realism might be appropriated for sport ethics. (shrink)

Does the ‘Zeitenwende’ herald the beginning of a new and as yet undefined open society realism? The present essay argues this question requires critical discussion of nature and value of realist political theory, particularly at a time where international society is accelerating to somewhere which is itself as yet unclear. Adding to revisionist research on political realism in International Relations (IR) theory I sketch how a political vision I call open society realism may be developed out of Classical realism, in (...) sharp distinction to academic IR neorealism for methodological and political reasons. To strip foreign policy realism from Continental philosophy, law, and history risks that we become what political liberalism ought to avoid: a closed society with a good conscience retreating from world politics, hiding behind the ‘national’ interest as if strategic great power management is a methodic function of structure rather than the politics of an ethically conscious diplomacy. (shrink)

This Companion centers on the fictitious social contract that can be used to justify liberalism. As justification, the theory of the contract either fully justifies a regime as liberal or it fully condemns it as illiberal. This conflicts with the common recognition that liberalism is a matter of degree. John Rawls is taken as the leading light; yet at best the Companion manages to picture him as well-intended but hopelessly confusing.

It has been widely observed that virtue ethics, regarded as an ethics of the ancient, in contrast to deontology and consequentialism, seen as an ethics of the modern (Larmore 1996: 19–23), is experiencing an impressive revival and is becoming a strong rival to utilitarianism and deontology in the English-speaking world in the last a few decades. Despite this, it has been perceived as having an obvious weakness in comparison with its two major rivals. While both utilitarianism and deontology can at (...) the same time serve as an ethical theory, providing guidance for individual persons and a political philosophy, offering ways to structure social institutions, virtue ethics, as it is concerned with character traits of individual persons, seems to be ill-equipped to be politically useful. In recent years, some attempts have been made to develop the so-called virtue politics, but most of them, including my own (see Huang 2014: Chapter 5), are limited to arguing for the perfectionist view that the state has the obligation to do things to help its members develop their virtues, and so the focus is still on the character traits of individual persons. However important those attempts are, such a notion of virtue politics is clearly too narrow, unless one thinks that the only job the state is supposed to do is to cultivate its people’s virtues. Yet obviously the government has many other jobs to do such as making laws and social policies, many if not most of which are not for the purpose of making people virtuous. The question is then in what sense such laws and social policies are moral in general and just in particular. Utilitarianism and deontology have their ready answers in the light of utility or moral principles respectively. Can virtue ethics provide its own answer? This paper attempts to argue for an affirmative answer to this question from the Confucian point of view, as represented by Mencius. It does so with a focus on the virtue of justice, as it is a central concept in both virtue ethics and political philosophy. (shrink)

The current philosophical debate on just international trade has moved away from purely idealistic theorizing into the direction of non-ideal theory. At the same time most philosophical thought on just trade is still rather idealistic and the main argument of the paper is that some philosophical reasoning about international trade justice should be more realistic. The paper develops in three steps. In a first step I will give a short overview over normative questions that arise with respect to international trade. (...) I will then highlight a proposal brought forward by Leif Wenar, because he is aware of the realist challenge and tries to counter it. In a second step I will discuss why it is important to integrate a realist perspective into philosophical considerations of international trade justice. Trade agreements are embedded in political contexts that influence the normative perspective one should take on trade justice. This leads to the third part of the article, where I will explore how a realist approach can go along with more idealistic perspectives, which leads to a weakly realist perspective on trade justice. (shrink)

The article deals with the social pragmatist approach to the political conception of community, especially in light of the challenges posed by the tendency to view democracy without community and blur the problem and boundaries between conflict and reconciliation. KEY WORDS – Community. Conflict. Democracy. Pragmatism. Reconciliation.

It is becoming evident that failure to reconcile African Christians and Muslims is partly due to the misinterpretation of the African epistemology of peace. This work argues that Christian-Muslim peacemaking must be conceived apart from the Western epistemology whereby conferences, lectures, chart signing, religious fora, and systematic military strategies are common practices. For Africans, peacemaking involves creating a space where members of a community connect with each other at a deeper level. This paper explores the process of reconciling African Christians (...) and Muslims, not exclusively from a diplomatic tact and religious slant, but from intrinsic cultural constituents like the African ubuntu, Fulbe’s pulaaku, and the Ethiopian medemer which are entrenched in the notion of kinship. A Fulbe proverb constitutes a tool for illustrating kinship and peace. (shrink)

In this study, we explore the global effect of the Internet on democracy over the period of 1992 to 2002 by observing the relationships between measures related to democracy and Internet prevalence. Our findings suggest that while Internet usage was not a very powerful predictor of democracy when examining full panel data from 1992 to 2002, it was a stronger predictor when we study data from just the years 2001 to 2002. We hypothesize that the jump in the ability of (...) Internet penetration indicators to explain variation in democratization that occurred in 2000 suggests that the Internet may have only recently come into its own as a positive force for democratization. However, these results are not globally consistent, and we show that some regions do not enjoy a positive Internet/democracy correlation suggesting that the Internet can be used both as a tool for democratization as well as an instrument for authoritarianism. (shrink)

This article examines why and how workers adhere and contribute to the perpetuation of the freedom fantasy induced by neoliberal ideology. We turn to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the human condition, which offers invaluable insights into the mechanisms that foster the erosion of human freedom in the workplace. Embracing an Arendtian lens, we demonstrate that individuals become entrapped in a libertarian fantasy—a condition enacted by the replacement of the freedom to act by the freedom to perform. The latter embodies the (...) survivalist modus operandi of animal laborans who renounces singularity, by focusing on the function of supervised labor, who renounces solidarity, by focusing on individualist and competitive labor, and who is deprived of spontaneity, by focusing on the measured productivity of labor. Therefore, we propose a new corporate governance perspective based on the rehabilitation of political action in organizations as the best way to preserve human capacity for singularity, solidarity, and spontaneity. (shrink)

Beginning with our cosmic ancestors and the 1950s ancestors of Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, this essay highlights the wider, post-World War II cultural context, including other science and religion organizations, in which IRAS was formed. It then considers eight challenges from today's context. From the context of science there are the challenge of scale that leads us to question our place in the scheme of things and can lead to a challenge to morale concerning whether we (...) make any difference; the challenge of human variability that leads to the question whether there is a single human moral nature; and the challenge of detailed explanation that leads to the question of what is the task of theology in relation to detailed scientific explanation. From the religion context there are the challenge of objectivity—studying religion without practicing religion; and the challenge of pluralism and the variety of cultural and religious perspectives. From the context of the growing and diverse science-and-religion enterprise, considered from the perspective of IRAS developed in the first part of this essay, there are the challenges of apologetics and intellectualization. Finally, from the context of our growing, worldwide consumerist culture that is contributing to the radical alteration of the planetary environment, leading to much suffering, there is the challenge of becoming more motivated to act for the long-term global good. (shrink)

A standard view in ethics is that ethical issues concern a different range of human concerns than does politics. This essay goes beyond the long-standing dispute about the extent to which applied ethics needs a commitment to ethical theory. It argues that regardless of the outcome of that dispute, applied ethics, because it presumes something about the nature of authority, rests upon and is implicated in political theory. After internalist and externalist accounts of applied ethics are described, “mixed” approaches are (...) considered that contain inevitable political dimensions. A feminist alternative, Walker’s metaethic of responsibility, shows that authority is best understood as relational and that situations of unequal power are therefore often the places where applied ethics arises. Furthermore, in a democratic society, commitments to democracy should shape the account of authority, and, thus, the nature of applied ethics as well. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Reinhold Niebuhr's ethics of self-restraint, though promising, is based on an incomplete and imprecise moral psychology. Although Niebuhr claims that reason cannot provide a sufficient grounding to motivate self-restraint, he does not disclose which human capacity might serve this purpose. I suggest that we can address this oversight by strengthening Niebuhr's tentative embrace of David Hume, and by developing a concept of the emotions in order to explain how human beings can cultivate a stable (...) inclination to self-restraint. This project is informed by and in the service of feminist critiques of Niebuhr and social concerns. (shrink)

This essay compares Christian and Islamic teaching on the question of forcible humanitarian intervention and concludes that the traditions are sufficiently similar to enable agreement on how and when to intervene in a humanitarian crisis.

This article considers the current global trend of Internally Displaced Persons and the Refugee Crisis, which have become serious concerns for most nations of the world and for the Church. While not limiting the discussion to the current refugee situation, the article focuses more on the circumstances faced by IDPs in Nigeria and the factors that led to this situation. The article brings a Biblical perspective to the situation, as it also looks at the role that theological education can play (...) in stemming the migration tide. Bibliographic and ethnographic tools used in eliciting data reveal that theological education has a role in critically assessing the IDP situation and finding a way out of it. Also, theological education can be a prophetic voice for the Church and society in condemning the factors that lead to crises, and even in urging and encouraging both the government and the Church to fulfil their responsibilities. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between virtue and understandings of time through a comparative examination of two medieval Christian writers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas. By locating temporal dimensions of virtue primarily in discussions of prudence, this essay compares Thomas's account of the virtue of counsel as preparatory to prudent judgment with Bernard's earlier account of consideration as an integrating virtue that coordinates an examination of physical surroundings and social responsibilities with an examination of one's own inner life and (...) history of moral decisions. The essay argues that accounts of virtue ethics focusing on tradition-specific views of the human good and practical reasoning are insufficient if they do not also examine how practical reasoning interprets and responds to religious interpretations of time that disclose the distinctive kinds of moral problems arising in each historical period. (shrink)

Kegley asks whether in a culturally pluralistic global community it is possible to find a common normative principle that statesmen from diverse ethical traditions might embrace to discipline democratic behavior.