Many believe that organization is to be depersonalized far as possible. But can it be entirely rid of personal dimension? And should one consider the personal a mere impediment or it may claim also a wholesome part? The author sheds light on the personal “engines” of organizational management and reveals the mechanisms of its influence on the decisions and behavior of both rank and files and higher-ups by scrutinizing the relevant managerial practice and research findings. Are revealed in corpore and (...) presented in a systematic form the factors limiting depersonalization and the intimate features of personality – emotional, volitional, and subliminal – to be brought into play. It is argued that they are not merely requisites for effective management but also fundamental conditions of success in uncertain, diverse, erratic, tangled, and quickly changing environment. Depersonalization not so much raises the level of management as technicalizes it, ousting “pieces” with no need for personal involvement from the system of human relations. They cease to be organizational proper and turn into a technological appendage subject to technical control rather than management. The paper opens a new line of research aimed at discovering the intrapersonal drives as a run-the-organization resource. The findings and conclusions the author has come to is of use to practicioners who can employ them for increasing the effectiveness of their activity as well as to teachers wanting to give a more precise and comprehensive picture of human behavior within the courses of management and organization theory. (shrink)

To the memory of my mother ErnaShakespeare saw in the beauty and passion of young hearts "the irradiating glory of sunlight and starlight in a dark world." In contrast to Arthur Brooke, the dramatist shows not the omnipotence of merciless and inexorable fate but an inextinguishable image of "light, every form and manifestation of it: the sun, moon, stars, fire, lightning, the flash of gunpowder, and the reflected light of beauty and of love." All these are opposed to "night, darkness, (...) clouds, rain, mist and smoke."1 And that is not merely a radical turn as compared with Brooke but a breaking of the literary tradition that, until then, did not depict love in such a perspective. Shakespeare proposed, in fact, a... (shrink)

To the memory of my mother ErnaThe axis on which art creativity revolves is originality. Any genuine piece of art must be original; otherwise, it boils down to a mere replication or imitation and is of little worth. A work is thought to be the more original the newer it is. But what exactly should be new in it and to what extent for it to get sufficient ground to claim originality still remain a riddle.What is meant by the new? (...) Usually, it is construed as what has not existed before and is just brought into the world. In other words, novelty should have no immediate precursor in the past. But such a treatment holds a serious inner contradiction. Where does the new come from if it does not grow out of the old? It... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 602-603 [Access article in PDF] Paul B. Thompson and Thomas C. Hilde, editors. The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism. The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 342. Cloth, $39.95. If "racial memory" is a viable concept, then the enduring paradigm of human productivity is agriculture, whose seventy-century dominion Western industry and urbanization have eclipsed only (...) within the last two hundred years. The fifteen essays collected here explore America's distinctive form of agrarianism: where individualism, democracy, and a seemingly endless frontier transcended European quarrels over "commons" versus "containment." These values also helped forge our indigenous philosophy—pragmatism—and it is the confluence of these two distinctive American forms that intrigues each of these authors.The essays fall roughly into three groups: 1) historical queries whose connection to pragmatism is marginal, 2) expositions of the agrarian roots of pragmatism, and 3) estimates of the influence of classical pragmatism on the recent rise of neoagrarianism. The first category offers sparkling essays by Charles Taliaferro, James Campbell, Paul B. Thompson, Robert S. Corrington, and Douglas R. Anderson. Together these scholars sketch a history from colonial times to the mid-twentieth century—from Jefferson's "noble agrarian" to the agony of reconstruction, which hastened the split between Northern transcendentalists and Southern romantics. There are some surprises: Franklin outshines even Jefferson with his balanced vision of self-improvement and community weal, and Jefferson's correspondent Crèvecoueur emerges as a visionary who foresaw farming as a wholesome and integrated way of life a century before Emerson and Thoreau. Thomas C. Hilde finds an engagingly pragmatic notion of community in Josiah Royce, and Richard E. Hart discovers Dewey's sense of concrete experience in the novels of John Steinbeck. The contributions of neglected figures such as Francois Quesnay, Liberty Hyde Bailey, John Brewster, and A Whitney Griswold are also recovered.Turning to the second group, though obviously an irresistible title the notion that classical pragmatism is robustly "rooted" in agrarianism is slightly disingenuous. Peirce and James have no direct ties to agrarianism. And though Dewey's themes of innovation, social intelligence, community, and a conception of experience broadly inclusive of organisms and environments reflect obvious affinities, they do not show that pragmatism grew directly from or is a variant of agrarianism. Happily, the pieces on Dewey contributed by Larry A. Hickman and Armen Marsoobian harbor no such illusions, [End Page 602] and Dewey is specifically disassociated from the claim that agriculture is a privileged form of experience.The third, and perhaps most significant, aim of the volume is to bring pragmatic insights into the recent groundswell toward neoagrarianism. Where traditional agrarianism was polarized between the domination of nature and its romantic beatification, the movement pioneered by Wendell Berry in the 1970s portrays the farmer as a nurturer whose goal is to seek an optimal harmony in the health of the land, the family, the community, and the country. In this James A. Montmarquet finds a Deweyan respect for an encompassing "situation," a unity of fact and value in stark opposition to the "corporate" mentality of specialization and success measured in economic gain alone. For Jeffrey Burkhardt, land grant universities must renew their original commitment to the family farm by distancing themselves from the forces of positivism and scientism—the technocrats and bio-chemical engineers who have imperiled both the land and the communities who depend upon it. Neither Montmarquette nor Burkhardt are looking for handouts, or for a return to the "idyllic" life of the one-horse plow. They emphasize moral training and a combination of practices designed to support the sustainability of the smaller farm in a competitive marketplace.One author compares the mention of agrarianism in philosophical discourse to committing a rude act in public. Clearly, however, mere "respectability" is not enough. If the contributors to this volume are correct, agrarianism is a lantern that may illuminate our ongoing search for wholeness and integrity. Frank X. Ryan Kent State University... (shrink)

Als wir bei Sonnenuntergang gerade durch die Herde Nilpferde hindurchfuhren, stand urplötzlich, von mir nicht gesucht, das Wort »Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben« vor mir. Der Pfad im Dickicht war sichtbar geworden. Nun war ich zu der Idee vorgedrungen, in der Welt- und Lebensbejahung und Ethik miteinander enthalten sind. Albert Schweitzer Seit fast 100 Jahren steht der Name Albert Schweitzer für aktives humanitäres Engagement. Dank seiner Philosophie der »Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben«, die er gemeinsam mit seiner Frau Helene Bresslau im Urwaldhospital (...) in Lambarene verwirklichte, gehört er zu den am meisten bewunderten Menschen der Welt. Mit dreißig Jahren ein geachteter Theologe und gefeierter Interpret der Orgelwerke Johann Sebastian Bachs entschloss er sich, noch ein Medizinstudium zu absolvieren, um den Ärmsten der Armen zu helfen. Ernst Luther nähert sich diesem Humanisten mit philosophisch-kritischen Betrachtungen, ordnet dessen Leben und Werk in die Umbrüche seiner Zeit ein und resümiert, was von Schweitzers Gedankengut bewahrt werden sollte. Ernst Luther, Jg. 1932, Studium der Pädagogik, Geschichte/Germanistik, extern Philosophie, Gasthörer Medizin an der Universität Halle; Promotion Dr. phil. 1961 zur medizinischen Anthropologie Viktor von Weizsäckers an der Universität Greifswald; Dr. sc. phil. 1970 Universität Halle mit einer Arbeit über Ethik in der Medizin. Herausgeber und Mitautor zahlreicher Arbeiten zur Ethik in der Medizin. Mitglied im Albert-Schweitzer-Komitee e. V. Weimar, im Deutschen Hilfsverein für das Albert-Schweitzer-Spital Lambarene, Frankfurt a. M., in der Internationalen Albert-Schweitzer-Vereinigung. Von 2000 bis 2002 Mitglied der Enquete-Kommission des Deutschen Bundestages Recht und Ethik in der Medizin. Inhalt: Vorwort Albert Schweitzer - der friedlichen Menschheit zugehörig Das »Bergwerk der Ethik« Das Menschenbild aus Schweitzers philosophischer und religiöser Sicht Albert Schweitzer und Karl Marx Albert Schweitzers Gedanken zu Kultur und Ethik in den Weltreligionen Albert Schweitzer und die Ethik in der Medizin Ethik und Völkerfrieden Sozialethik gegen Kolonialpolitik und Rassenhass. (shrink)

Die vielfältige Ethik-Diskussion in der Wirtschaft wird in diesem Buch vor die existentiellen Herausforderungen des Atomzeitalters gestellt: Möglicher atomarer Holocaust, tiefgreifende Ökologieprobleme und das Elend der armen Länder sind Themen, die zentral in den Dialog zwischen «Ethik und Wirtschaft» einbezogen werden müssen. Die gegenwärtige Wirtschaftsethik stellt sich diesen Problemen nur in unzureichender Weise. Damit bekommt die Ethik eine bloße Alibifunktion in der Wirtschaft. Mit dem Konzept eines «ökosophischen Managements» soll versucht werden, auch in der Wirtschaft ethisch legitimierbare Antworten auf (...) die Herausforderungen des epochalen Umbruchs zu geben. Auf welches Interesse dieses Konzept stößt, belegt die mittlerweile 4. Auflage. (shrink)

Interpretation of the classics in political theory seems to go in waves. For a while we had John Locke, the bourgeois thinker. Now we seem to be in a Locke-as-radical-democrat phase. Locke-the-bourgeois had problems of its own, but a radically democratic Locke -- not just the old Locke as liberal democrat but Locke as quasi-Leveller -- strains the interpretative imagination more than most; yet in recent years, several different kinds of argument have been advanced in support of it, both textual (...) and contextual. The most effective argument has proceeded by situating Locke in the context of radical Whig politics in the 1670s and '80s, the struggles over religious toleration and the royal succession, in particular the �Exclusion Crisis� of 1679-81. This contextual argument has been accompanied by various textual interpretations having to do with Locke's conceptions of property, consent, representation, the right of revolution and natural law. Among other things, these are supposed to show that while Locke had nothing explicit to say about the extent of the franchise, the weight of evidence suggests that he would have supported a fairly wide franchise, perhaps even something like the (almost) manhood suffrage advocated by the Levellers (at least according to some, and probably the most convincing, interpretations of their ideas). Most recently, in these pages, Martin Hughes, building on the work of James Tully and Richard Ashcraft in particular, has pushed the argument as far as it can probably go. His argument on taxation and suffrage has provided a motivation here for a wider exploration of Locke's views on representation, consent and the franchise. (shrink)

Para entender la aproximación de Hegel a la filosofía clásica hay que hacer lecturas diferenciadas y restablecer los criterios hermenéuticos de los que echa mano para revisar la historia de la filosofía: cuestiones y aspectos que no siempre se han tomado en consideración para dar cuenta del valor de las interpretaciones hegelianas. Hegel fue un filósofo moderno que reivindicó el estudio de la historia de la filosofía, que brindó claves hermenéuticas de interpretación y que dejó apropiaciones sugerentes que invitan a (...) una renovada lectura de los clásicos. (shrink)

L'ed. delle Obligationes si basa su quattro mss.: Praha, Knihovni Metropolitni Kapituly, M.CXLV ; Oxford, New College, E 289 ; Praha, Státní Knihóvna CSR, VIII E 11 ; Salamanca, Biblioteca de la Universidad, 2358 . Nell'introduzione l'A. prende in esame la tradizione manoscritta delle opere di Giovanni Tarteys, fornendo anche una breve notizia biografica di questo magister artium attivo ad Oxford tra la fine del Trecento e gli inizi del Quattrocento. Segue un'analisi comparata del De Obligationibus di Giovanni con le (...) trattazioni analoghe di altri maestri, tra i quali Rodolfo Strode, Gualterio Burley, Paolo da Venezia e Giovanni Wyclif. Discussi infine i criteri di edizione. (shrink)

The failure of the critics of corporate governance to agree on what should be done to improve the governance process can, in most cases, be traced to a different understanding of the role of corporate directors in that process. This article analyzes and contrasts the obligations of directors under two legal theories, the fictional person theory and the organic theory, of the corporation. A comparison of the director's obligations under each theory indicates that the organic theory provides a better basis (...) for assessing the performance of directors and initiating reform.Among the boards of directors of Fortune 500 companies, I estimate that 95% are not fully doing what they are legally, morally, and ethically supposed to do. And they couldn't, even if they wanted to. (shrink)

In R. C. Flickinger's (3rd ed. second impression 1929) we read on pp. 171In the iambic trimeters written by Aeschylus a trisyllabic substitution (tribrach, anapaest or dactyl) for the pure disyllabic iambus occurs only once in about twenty-five verses.Tragic Drama of the Greekstrimeters’ lines like.

Though merely an essay, I challenge you, gentle reader, by attempting to demonstrate that my own words are not fundamentally different from the conscious thoughts in your own mind: I thus claim to have consciousness and qualia.

In the summer of 1997 one could scarcely enter a bookstore in Beijing without encountering Wang Xiaobo's pensive and defiant look on the cover of dozens of books displayed at the entrance. Wang had suddenly died in the spring of that year at the age of forty-five. Born in Beijing in 1952 to a family of intellectuals, he remained attached to China's capital despite periods of separation, such as during the Cultural Revolution, when he was sent to Yunnan to "learn (...) from the peasants" and taught in a "people-run-school" in Shandong, and also during the 1980s, when he studied in the United States . Wang always returned to Beijing, in the late 1970s to study economy and business at the People's University and in the late 1980s to teach there. After retiring in 1993, he devoted his time to writing: poetry, novels, essays, non-fiction, and a movie script. (shrink)

Although students of the fifth century A.D. have not been slow to recognize the merits of the ͉στορα Βυζαντιακ of Priscus, few efforts seem to have been made to under-stand this historian's methods of composition. The purpose of the present note is to indicate that the literary fashions of his time have exercised an unfortunate influence on at least one part of Priscus' work.