SummaryChallenging the common conception of Jean Bodin as an ‘anti-Aristotelian’ thinker, this article places Bodin's political thought in the context of oeconomics—the science, or art of the household—as it had developed in medieval and Renaissance commentaries on Aristotle's practical philosophy. The article argues that he thereby took part in a longstanding discussion in European political thought which saw the household as possessing a political dimension. Bodin's thought on the family is central to both his universal claims pertaining to his notion (...) of the political and his more particular interest in sovereignty and the origins of absolutism. The article explores Bodin's analysis of the household as the starting point of his inquiry into the nature of a commonwealth and the foundation of his conception of the state; it examines the relationship of la police and l'oeconomie in detail, and argues that the conjugal relationship is the determinant for Bodin's conception of absolute rule and of the origins of supreme power. (shrink)

1. Reasoning about action and change, or more generally reasoning about dynamic systems, is not only central to knowledge representation and reasoning but at the heart of computer science (Fisher e...

Background: Nurses’ collegiality is topical because patient care is complicated, requiring shared knowledge and working methods. Nurses’ collaboration has been supported by a number of different working models, but there has been less focus on ethics. Aim: This study aimed to develop nurses’ collegiality guidelines using the Delphi method. Method: Two online panels of Finnish experts, with 35 and 40 members, used the four-step Delphi method in December 2013 and January 2014. They reformulated the items of nurses’ collegiality identified by (...) the literature and rated based on validity and importance. Content analysis and descriptive statistical methods were used to analyze the data, and the nurses’ collegiality guidelines were formulated. Ethical considerations: Organizational approval was received, and an informed consent was obtained from all participants. Information about the voluntary nature of participation was provided. Results: During the first Delphi panel round, a number of items were reformulated and added, resulting in 32 reformulated items. As a result of the second round, 8 of the 32 items scored an agreement rate of more than 75%, with the most rated item being collegiality means that professionals respect each other. The item with second highest rating was collegiality has a common objective: what is best for patients, followed by the third highest which was professional ethics is the basis of collegiality. Conclusion: Nurses’ collegiality and its content are well recognized in clinical practice but seldom studied. Collegiality can be supported by guidelines, and nurses working in clinical practice, together with teachers and managers, have shared responsibilities to support and develop it. More research in different nursing environments is needed to improve understanding of the content and practice of nursing collegiality. (shrink)

With Gendering the Commonwealth, Anna Becker has given us one of the most stimulating discussions of the “language and concepts of Renaissance political thought” (1) in recent years. Over five chap...

In this erudite study, Anna Becker employs the lens of gender to explore the political thought of nine Renaissance writers. She argues that political thinkers in the Italian and French Renaissance perceived the domestic realm to be essentially political, particularly within relationships of marriage and parenting. She demonstrates that "The Great Dichotomy"—the assumed binary opposition between a public-civic realm that is political and male, and a private-domestic realm that is apolitical and female—did not exist in canonical Renaissance political (...) thought.The first chapter closely examines how three Italian commentators, Leonardo Bruni, Donato Acciaioli, and Bernardo Segni... (shrink)

Der vorliegende Aufsatz beleuchtet den Umgang des Transhumanismus mit den menschlichen Grenzen und zieht daraus Konsequenzen für eine Anthropologie und Ethik im 21. Jahrhundert. Nach einer kurzen Einführung in die transhumanistische Bewegung im ersten Kapitel werden im zweiten Kapitel die Themen und Technologien des Transhumanismus skizziert, die immer auch Versuche der Grenzüberschreitung sind. Dabei wird ebenfalls auf die mit dem Transhumanismus verwandte Bewegung des technologischen Posthumanismus eingegangen. Anschließend werden im dritten Kapitel die anthropologischen Annahmen, die mit den transhumanistischen Visionen verbunden (...) sind, untersucht – exemplarisch geschieht dies anhand der Interpretation des Menschen als Maschine, der Verhältnisbestimmung von Körper und Geist, dem Ziel der Kontrolle sowie der Perfektionierung des Menschen. Die angestrebten Grenzerweiterungen entpuppen sich in dieser Untersuchung statt als Entgrenzungen des Menschen im Gegenteil als dessen Begrenzungen, indem sie auf einem reduktionistischen Verständnis vom Menschen basieren. Zuletzt zeigt das fünfte Kapitel die Konsequenzen dieser Untersuchung für eine Anthropologie und Ethik im Kontext der modernen Technologien auf. Außerdem werden Ansätze vorgestellt, wie die Debatten um den Transhumanismus und moderne Technologien eine Chance für die Anthropologie und Ethik sein können, die gegenwärtigen Körper- und Menschenbilder zu hinterfragen. Beispielsweise werden die Ansätze des kritischen Posthumanismus vorgestellt und ein erweitertes, inklusives Körperverständnis postuliert. -/- Puzio, Anna: Zwischen Ent-und Begrenzung – Anthropologische und ethische Perspektiven auf die Grenzen des Menschen im Transhumanismus. In: Becker, Josef/Kistler, Sebastian, Niehoff, Max (Hg.): Grenzgänge der Ethik. (Forum Sozialethik 22). Münster: Aschendorff 2020, S. 149–180. DOI: 10.17438/978-3-402-10655-6. (shrink)

Pursuing Justice in Africa focuses on the many actors pursuing many visions of justice across the African continent--their aspirations, divergent practices, and articulations of international and vernacular idioms of justice. The essays selected by editors Jessica Johnson and George H. Karekwaivanane engage with topics at the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship across a wide range of disciplines. These include activism, land tenure, international legal institutions, and post-conflict reconciliation. Building on recent work in sociolegal studies that foregrounds justice over and above (...) concepts such as human rights and legal pluralism, the contributors grapple with alternative approaches to the concept of justice and its relationships with law, morality, and rights. While the chapters are grounded in local experiences, they also attend to the ways in which national and international actors and processes influence, for better or worse, local experiences and understandings of justice. The result is a timely and original addition to scholarship on a topic of major scholarly and pragmatic interest. Contributors: Felicitas Becker, Jonathon L. Earle, Patrick Hoenig, Stacey Hynd, Fred Nyongesa Ikanda, Ngeyi Ruth Kanyongolo, Anna Macdonald, Bernadette Malunga, Alan Msosa, Benson A. Mulemi, Holly Porter, Duncan Scott, Olaf Zenker. (shrink)

This important new book by one of the world's leading political theorists boldly questions the moral justification for organizing our world as a territorial states-system and proposes major changes to states' sovereign powers.

"Grande fut au XIXe siècle la confusion des termes et l'incertitude des objectifs dans les théories morales concurrentes. En réaction, naquit une discipline nouvelle, la métaéthique, requérant qu'on commençât par soumettre la réflexion morale à des contraintes épistémologiquement plus rigoureuses. Ainsi émergèrent des travaux portant sur la signification des énoncés moraux et sur leurs conditions de vérité, sur les éléments constitutifs de l'éthique, sur la tension entre ce qu'on peut connaître et décrire et ce qu'on peut plutôt sentir et exprimer (...) dans la sphère morale. Le présent volume réunit des textes qui ont marqué leur époque et qui sont devenus des références essentielles dans le paysage métaéthique contemporain. La première partie du volume présente l'effort qui fut fait de saisir dans un cadre réaliste les notions fondamentales de l'éthique, la deuxième oppose à cette entreprise qui se veut scientifique la critique parfois sceptique, la troisième met en cause certains présupposés actifs dans les deux partis, et propose de nouvelles lectures du réalisme moral."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

The patterns of physical growth (stature, BMI, subscapular and arm fat-fold thickness, upper and lower extremity length, chest circumference, arm, and hip breadth, and age at menarche) were studied in 857 of Maya and Mestizo girls and 1314 of Creole girls aged 6-18 years. Data were collected between 1998-2001 in primary, secondary, and high schools of Merida, Capital City of the Yucatan State, Mexico. The ethnicity of girls was defined using their two surnames (from the father and mother side). The (...) results show that Creoles are taller, have more abundant fat tissue, and greater BMI, especially at the age of 11 years, which means that they are better prepared to start pubertal spurt. Maya girls have relatively longer upper extremities to lower ones, greater biacromial breadth, and chest circumference to stature than Creoles, which shows their more stocky body build. The adolescent (pubertal) spurt in height starts earlier in Creoles (9-10 years) and its rate is greater (max. = 7.48 cm/ year) than in Maya and Mestizos girls (10-11 years; max. = 6.25 cm/year). In Mayas and Mestizos, there is only a slight difference between the rate of changes before and during the pubertal spurt. There are no significant differences in age at menarche between girls from both ethnic groups (11.96 in Mayas and Mestizos and 12.04 in Creoles), but there are statistically significant differences between age at menarche of studied girls and their mothers (12.4 for both groups) in each ethnic group. There is evidence that the onset of pubertal spurt in height and its rate may depend on ethnicity. Creoles may lead to a more “westernized” style of life than the Maya and Mestizos girls. (shrink)

This paper argues that the function of moral education in the biomedical context should be exactly the same as in a general, philosophical framework: it should not provide ready-to-use kits of moral principles; rather, it must show the history, epistemology and conceptual structure of moral theories that would enable those who have to make decisions to be as informed and as responsible as possible. If this complexity cannot be attained, an incomplete product—i.e. bioethics or bioethical principles—should not be seen as (...) a viable substitute. This theoretical position is subsequently illustrated by a case study involving research ethics committees. It is argued that within these committees, that are carefully formed multidisciplinary bodies, what makes competent decision-making possible is not a bioethical theory, nor even a sound philosophical ethics, but the dynamics of the discussion of a number of experts coming from different disciplines. This multidisciplinary expertise is necessary and sufficient to undertake the challenges of complex decisions in the biomedical context. (shrink)

Many political theorists today deny that citizenship can be defended on liberal grounds alone. Cosmopolitans claim that loyalty to a particular state is incompatible with universal liberal principles, which hold that we have equal duties of justice to persons everywhere, while nationalist theorists justify civic obligations only by reaching beyond liberal principles and invoking the importance of national culture. In Liberal Loyalty, Anna Stilz challenges both views by defending a distinctively liberal understanding of citizenship. Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, and (...) Habermas, Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves--rather than territory, common language, or shared culture--are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens. She demonstrates that specifying what freedom and equality mean among a particular people requires their democratic participation together as a group. Justice, therefore, depends on the authority of the democratic state because there is no way equal freedom can be defined or guaranteed without it. Yet, as Stilz shows, this does not mean that each of us should entertain some vague loyalty to democracy in general. Citizens are politically obligated to their own state and to each other, because within their particular democracy they define and ultimately guarantee their own civil rights. Liberal Loyalty is a persuasive defense of citizenship on purely liberal grounds. (shrink)

18 November 2019CH: Thank you for agreeing to do this. The prompt for the interview was to talk about your recently published book, Territorial Sovereignty, but I thought before we got into that you could say something about your earlier work and how that led you to be interested in this particular project that you deal with in the book.

_Levinas, Subjectivity, Education_ explores how the philosophical writings of Emmanuel Levinas lead us to reassess education and reveals the possibilities of a radical new understanding of ethical and political responsibility. Presents an original theoretical interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas that outlines the political significance of his work for contemporary debates on education Offers a clear analysis of Levinas’s central philosophical concepts, including the place of religion in his work, demonstrating their relevance for educational theorists Examines Alain Badiou’s critique of Levinas’s work (...) Considers the practical implications of Levinas’ theories for concrete educational practices and frameworks. (shrink)

This article describes a survey among Finnish business students to find answers to the following questions: How do business students define a well-run company? What are their attitudes on the responsibilities of business in society? Do the attitudes of women students differ from those of men? What is the influence of business education on these attitudes? Our sample comprised 217 students pursuing a master's degree in business studies at two Finnish universities. The results show that, as a whole, students valued (...) the stakeholder model of the company more than the shareholder model. However, attitudes differed according to gender: women students were more in favor of the stakeholder model and placed more weight on corporate ethical, environmental, and societal responsibilities than their men counterparts - both at the beginning and at the end of their studies. Thus, no gender socialization effect of business school education could be observed in this sense. Business school education was found to shape women and men students' attitudes in two ways. Firstly, valuation of the shareholder model increased and, secondly, the importance of equal-opportunity employment decreased in the course of education. This raises the question whether the educational context is creating an undesirable tendency among future business professionals. The results further suggest that the sociocultural context can make a difference in how corporate social responsibility is perceived. The article also discusses possible ways to influence the attitudes of business students. (shrink)

In The Passion for Happiness, I attempt to situate Johnson alongside Hume within a common Enlightenment culture and, in so doing, to give us a better idea of what that culture is, or may be said to be. I am concerned in the book to analyze what I see as their shared debts to classical eudaimonism, particularly as it is presented in the philosophical dialogues of Cicero. In this regard, my book builds upon Peter Jones’s Hume’s Sentiments: Their Ciceronian and (...) French Contexts ; I am also deeply indebted to some recent re-interpreters of Hellenistic ethics, especially to Martha Nussbaum, Julia Annas, and Lawrence Becker. A third of my book, however, is devoted to a discussion of Johnson and Hume’s roughly parallel—and, I think, mutually illuminating—careers as political writers and commentators, including the political and moral casts of their historiographical writings. The titles of chapters 7 through 9—“The Passions and Patterns of History,” “Enthusiasm and Empire,” “Constancy”—suggest at least my hopes that The Passion for Happiness might be of some interest to intellectual and political historians. (shrink)

Ethical leadership has so far mainly been featured in the organizational behavior domain and, as such, treated as an intra-organizational phenomenon. The present study seeks to highlight the relevance of ethical leadership for extra-organizational phenomena by combining the organizational behavior perspective on ethical leadership with a classical marketing approach. In particular, we demonstrate that customers may use perceived ethical leadership cues as additional reference points when forming purchasing intentions. In two experimental studies, we find that ethical leadership positively affects purchasing (...) intentions because of customers’ concerns for moral self-congruence. We show this by means of both mediation and moderation analyses. Interestingly, the effect of perceived ethical leadership on purchasing intentions holds over and above the ethical advertising claims that are commonly used in marketing. We conclude by discussing the possible ramifications of ethical leadership beyond its effects on immediate employees. (shrink)

The concept of “enhypostaton” was introduced into theological discourse during the sixth-century Christological debates with the aim of justifying the unitary subjectivity of Christ by reclassifying Christ’s human nature as ontically non-independent. The coinage of the term is commonly ascribed to Leontius of Byzantium. Its conceptual content has been recognized by contemporary scholarship as relevant to the core issues of Christology, as well as possessing significance for such philosophical questions as individuation and the nature of individual entityhood. Even so, despite (...) its role in the formation of classical Christological thought, the notion of “enhypostaton” is often regarded as obscure and not clearly defined. This paper aims to shed some light on the meaning of Leontius’ conception of it, in respect of its specifically philosophical import. (shrink)

De nos jours, les avocats et les juristes chinois sont très friands d'Internet. Pourtant, leur utilisation de la Toile n'a pas encore été l'objet de recherches. Cet article veut apporter un regard nouveau sur le lien entre avocats, internautes et société civile chinoise. Les juristes ont trouvé en Internet, en particulier sur les blogs, un lieu d'information et d'échange où ils peuvent se dédier aux sujets qui les intéressent . Les multiples démarches qu'ils ont initiées au sein du Réseau ont (...) abouti à une mobilisation des moyens numériques, permettant de mieux communiquer et informer sur le système légal et judiciaire chinois. Leur utilisation d'Internet a-t-elle catalysé l'initiative personnelle des utilisateurs et mobilisé l'opinion publique ? Cet article s'attache à démontrer comment par le biais d'Internet les avocats ont pu être des acteurs du développement de la société civile et participer ainsi à l'émergence d'une « communauté de critères » relevant du droit.Nowadays, lawyers and jurists Chinese are very fond of the Internet. However, their use of the Internet has not yet been investigated. This article will provide a new perspective on the relationship between lawyers, surfers and Chinese civil society. Lawyers found in the Internet, especially on blogs, a place to exchange information and where they can devote themselves to topics that interest them . Multiple steps they have initiated within the network led to a mobilization digital means to better communicate and inform the Chinese legal and judicial system. Internet use did catalyzed users personal initiative and mobilized public opinion? This article aims to demonstrate how through Internet lawyers have been involved in development of civil society and thus contribute to the emergence of a "community standards" under the law. (shrink)

Quantitative research has called attention to the burden associated with informal caregiving in home nursing arrangements. Less emphasis has been placed, however, on care recipients’ subjective feelings of being a burden and on caregivers’ willingness to carry the burden in home care. This article uses empirical material from semi‐structured interviews conducted with older people affected by multiple chronic conditions and in need of long‐term home care, and with informal and professional caregivers, as two groups of relevant others. The high burden (...) of home‐care arrangements is unanimously stressed by all three groups involved in the triangle of care. An empirical‐ethical investigation of what can be legitimately expected from family members and informal caregivers, informed by Frith's symbiotic empirical ethics approach, was undertaken. Key tenets from the special goods theory and nursing professionalism are used as analytical tools. The study concludes that the current situation may hinder professional development and can reinforce feelings of being a burden to relevant others. (shrink)

In his book Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit suggests that people are not harmed by being conceived with a disease or disability if they could not have existed without suffering that particular condition. He nevertheless contends that entities can be harmed if the suffering they experience is sufficiently severe. By implication, there is a threshold which divides harmful from non-harmful conceptions. The assumption that such a threshold exists has come to play a part in UK policy making. I argue that (...) Parfit’s distinction between harmful and non-harmful conceptions is untenable. Drawing on Kant’s refutation of the ontological argument for God’s existence, I suggest that the act of creation cannot be identical with the act of harming—nor indeed of benefiting—however great the offspring’s suffering may be. I suggest that Parfit is right that bringing children into existence does not usually harm them, but I argue that this must be applied to all conceptions, since Parfit cannot show how the harm threshold can be operationalised. If we think certain conceptions are unethical or should be illegal, this must be on other grounds than that the child is harmed by them. I show that a Millian approach in this context fails to exemplify the empirical and epistemological advantages which are commonly associated with it, and that harm-based legislation would need to be based on broader harm considerations than those relating to the child who is conceived. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Saying and the Said Subjectivity as Sensibility Ethics of Difference or an Ethics of Truths? Reading Levinas with Badiou: Impossibly Demanding? An Impossibly Demanding Education Notes.

_Being Human _examines the complex connections among conceptions of human nature, attitudes toward non-human nature, and ethics. Anna Peterson proposes an "ethical anthropology" that examines how ideas of nature and humanity are bound together in ways that shape the very foundations of cultures. Peterson discusses mainstream Western understandings of what it means to be human, as well as alternatives to these perspectives, and suggests that the construction of a compelling, coherent environmental ethics will revise our ideas not only about (...) nature but also about what it means to be human. (shrink)

This commentary argues that the question of metalanguage is a key issue in emotion research. Izard (2010) ignores this issue (and all the earlier literature relating to it, including the debate in Emotion Review, 2009, 1[1]), and thus falls into the old traps of circularity, obscurity, and ethnocentrism. This commentary rejects Izard’s claim that “emotion” defies definition, and it offers a viable definition of “emotion” formulated in simple and universal human concepts, using the English version of the universal conceptual lingua (...) franca called Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). Once again, this commentary draws attention to the centrality of the question of language in emotion research. (shrink)

This study on Kant’s moral anthropology examines the conditions for achieving moral action, and strives to expand our understanding of Kantian moral philosophy. According to Kant, building moral character is not limited to developing rational capacities but also includes developing emotional capacities, and responsibly managing and deliberately cultivating emotional dispositions. / -/- Award: Förderpreis der Freiburger Kant-Stiftung und der Kant-Gesellschaft 2016 / -/- Anna Wehofsits’ Studie zu Kants moralischer Anthropologie untersucht die Realisierungsbedingungen moralischen Handelns. Die historische Rekonstruktion und systematische (...) Diskussion dieser Bedingungen zielt auf ein erweitertes Verständnis der Kantischen Ethik: Moralische Charakterbildung nach Kant ist nicht auf die Entwicklung rationaler Fähigkeiten beschränkt, sondern schließt die Entwicklung emotionaler Fähigkeiten ein, den verantwortlichen Umgang mit emotionalen Dispositionen und ihre gezielte Kultivierung. -/- . (shrink)

This article is the first to bring into scientific discussion and to provide a historico-philosophical analysis of a manuscript “Neoplatonic Philosophy from the archive of Pamfil Danylovych Yurkevych. The reviewed manuscript belongs to P. D. Yurkevych’s handwritten nachlass stored in the funds of the Institute of Manuscript of V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in the city of Kyiv. Additional archival materials are involved to answer several research questions. The author of this article provides arguments in favor of proving (...) that the manuscript is to be attributed to P. D. Yurkevych’s own handwriting, to be dated circa 1856, and that the purposing of its content is to be qualified as didactic. As it is established in the article, textual content of the manuscript in question is an original concise description and analysis of neoplatonic philosophy, which belongs to the set of materials created by P. D. Yurkevych in preparation for teaching the course on Ancient Philosophy in Kyiv Theological Academy during Kyivan period of his work. Turning to the inner critique of the manuscript, author of this article emphasizes an analysis that P. D. Yurkevych conducts concerning Plotinus’s ideas of the process of emanation of the world from the One and the role that philosophy has in true cognition. While comparing the manuscript “Neoplatonic Philosophy” with one of P. D. Yurkevych’s substantial philosophical works “Idea”, additional light is shed upon the prosess of genesis and development of Christian-Platonic worldview of the thinker. Furthermore, it is established that the manuscript in question played a major role in P. D. Yurkevych’s own schooling, particulary concerning his view on the philosophy of Plotinus, and his general reception of the Platonic tradition. (shrink)

The aim of the article is an attempt to analyze the impact of the pandemic crisis on innovations created by economic entities. The ongoing economic downturn has reasons different from previous economic peturbations, and has much more extensive effects across the entire global economy. Hence the need to analyze not individual economies as trends in the emergence of innovations initiated or significantly accelerated by the pandemic crisis. The analysis was made on the basis of reports from institutions such as the (...) World Economic Forum, OECD or ESPAS, as well as preliminary studies conducted in some countries. It should be emphasized that due to the ongoing perturbations and the pandemic not ending, precise research results will be possible to obtain in later years. (shrink)

A philosophical essay under this title faces severe rhetorical challenges. New accounts of the good life regularly and rapidly turn out to be variations of old ones, subject to a predictable range of decisive objections. Attempts to meet those objections with improved accounts regularly and rapidly lead to a familiar impasse — that while a life of contemplation, or epicurean contentment, or stoic indifference, or religious ecstasy, or creative rebellion, or self-actualization, or many another thing might count as a good (...) life, none of them can plausibly be identified with the good life, or the best life. Given the long history of that impasse, it seems futile to offer yet another candidate for the genus “good life” as if that candidate might be new, or philosophically defensible. And given the weariness, irony, and self-deprecation expected of a philosopher in such an impasse, it is difficult for any substantive proposal on this topic to avoid seeming pretentious. (shrink)

Standard notions in philosophy of mind have a tendency to characterize socio-cognitive abilities as if they were unique to sophisticated human beings. However, assuming that it is likely that we are soon going to share a large part of our social lives with various kinds of artificial agents, it is important to develop a conceptual framework providing notions that are able to account for various types of social agents. Recent minimal approaches to socio-cognitive abilities such as mindreading and commitment present (...) a promising starting point from which one can expand the field of application not only to infants and non-human animals but also to artificial agents. Developing a minimal approach to the socio-cognitive ability of acting jointly, I present a foundation for future discussions about the question of how our conception of sociality can be expanded to artificial agents. (shrink)