The appeal of the moral principle according to which we should treat like cases alike is so great that it verges on the axiomatic, or on the platitudinous. Recently, however, the principle has been challenged in deeply interesting ways. These ways are interesting because they do not invite skepticism about morality at large, but about the specific claim that what is good (or bad) for an agent in a given situation must be good (or bad) for any other similarly situated (...) agent. I here assess the post-challenge viability of the principle. In a sense, the principle survives, but this is neither an unqualified victory nor an inspiring result. The examination of these matters contains an important (and under-investigated) lesson about the nature of moral experience. (shrink)

Victor Tadros’ The Ends of Harm is the most recent systematic attempt to defend the good old utilitarian justification of punishment. The attempt fails for a variety of reasons, which are here explored. First, the attempt presupposes an implausible account of human’s psychology. Second, the attempt confuses an attack on retributivism with an attack on certain criminal justice systems. Finally, Tadros admits that his justification of punishment is best seen as a mere step along the road to full-blown abolitionism – (...) and so he unwittingly admits the extraordinarily thin sense in which he could be said to be really attempting to justify punishment. (shrink)

"All political action has . . . in itself a directedness towards knowledge of the good: of the good life, or of the good society. For the good society is the complete political good. If this directedness becomes explicit, if men make it their explicit goal to acquire knowledge of the good life and of the good society, political philosophy emerges. . . . The theme of political philosophy is mankind's great objectives, freedom and government or empire--objectives which are capable (...) of lifting all men beyond their poor selves. Political philosophy is that branch of philosophy which is closest to political life, to non-philosophic life, to human life."--From "What Is Political Philosophy?" What Is Political Philosophy? --a collection of ten essays and lectures and sixteen book reviews written between 1943 and 1957--contains some of Leo Strauss's most famous writings and some of his most explicit statements of the themes that made him famous. The title essay records Strauss's sole extended articulation of the meaning of political philosophy itself. Other essays discuss the relation of political philosophy to history, give an account of the political philosophy of the non-Christian Middle Ages and of classic European modernity, and present his theory of esoteric writing. (shrink)

During the last decades the physico-chemical conception of self-organization of chemical systems has been created. The chemical systems in natural-historical processes do not have any creator: they rise up from irreversible processes by self-organization. The issue of self-organization in physics has led to a new interpretation of the laws of nature. As Ilya Prigogine has shown, they do not express certainties but possibilities and describe a world that must be understood in a historical way. In the new philosophical understanding of (...) nature priority is not ascribed to any single type or level of entity, but to historical processes, to processes of endless generation and change. (shrink)

De oude idealen van regering door de best opgeleiden, die weten hoe zij met de verantwoordelijkheid van de macht moeten omgaan, zijn thans vervangen door technologie in vele vormen, die slechts een schijn van democratie in stand houden.

The age-old debate about what constitutes just punishment has become deadlocked. Retributivists continue to privilege desert over all else, and consequentialists continue to privilege punishment's expected positive consequences, such as deterrence or rehabilitation, over all else. In this important intervention into the debate, Leo Zaibert argues that despite some obvious differences, these traditional positions are structurally very similar, and that the deadlock between them stems from the fact they both oversimplify the problem of punishment. Proponents of these positions pay insufficient (...) attention to the conflicts of values that punishment, even when justified, generates. Mobilizing recent developments in moral philosophy, Zaibert offers a properly pluralistic justification of punishment that is necessarily more complex than its traditional counterparts. An understanding of this complexity should promote a more cautious approach to inflicting punishment on individual wrongdoers and to developing punitive policies and institutions. (shrink)

Shows how Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) picked up ideas on metaphor and ingenuity from the literary rhetoric of the age and turned them into valuable concepts in a general theory of knowledge and the philosophy of history for which he is now mainly known. Also shows how his original position enabled him to criticize Descartes' idea of rationality. Appends translations of relevant passages from contemporary writers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Der Aufsatz bietet einen Einblick in die Möglichkeiten, Normen zu umgehen - einer Praxis mit, wie gezeigt wird, langer Tradition. Die dargestellten Methoden reichen von einer Beeinflussung des Wissens des Täters, über das Heranziehen "anderer", seien es Menschen oder Maschinen, um die gewünschte aber verbotene Handlung vorzunehmen, bis hin zu Änderungen in den Kausalverläufen. Der Grund für diese Umgehungsmöglichkeiten liegt im Formalismus deontologischer Systeme, die im Gegensatz zu utilitaristischen Positionen gerade nicht auf die Folgen einer Handlung abstellen.

Contemporary HRM was introduced into Poland by the arrival of international corporations with their professional systems of Human Resource Management, which emphasizes ethical personnel management. This research is based on data collected from a questionnaire and interview of 40 women and men professional graduates of the 2004 Weekend MBA Program at Poznan University of Economics eliciting their perceptions of ethical issues in Polish HRM. The present Polish economic situation, with 19% unemployment, precipitates many ethical challenges. The questionnaire and interviews resulted (...) in 217 observations and specific examples of ethical HRM issues. Examples fall in two broad categories and five specific Human Resource areas. The broad external categories are: History and cultural attitudes and Exploitation of the current unemployment situation. Historical and cultural attitudes influence attitudes toward work; company discipline; property and ownership; law and social expectations at work. The history of personnel departments in Socialistic Poland explains many of these attitudes. The five specific categories are: Ethical issues in recruitment; Ethical issues in hiring ; Ethical issues in performance appraisals and promotions; Abuse of authority, and “Mobbing”. Ethical issues in these categories include correlation with appropriate Polish Labor and Penal Laws. This research reveals some HRM ethical challenges unique to Polish HRM. The research emphasizes professional HRM and ethical expectations, which are now being recognized and accepted as a strategic component of Polish management. (shrink)

Bonginkosi Shozi and Donrich Thaldar’s (2023) contribution is relevant to epistemic justice, which involves efforts to develop an inclusive and global bioethics that takes seriously perspectives fr...

Nicolas Gueudeville's 1715 French translation of Utopia is often dismissed as a “belle infidèle,” an elegant but unfaithful work of translation. Gueudeville does indeed expand the text to nearly twice its original length. But he presents Utopia as a contribution to emergent debates on tolerance, natural religion, and political anthropology, directly addressing the concerns of many early advocates of the ideas we associate with Enlightenment. In this sense, it is not as much an “unfaithful” presentation of More's project as it (...) is an attempt to introduce Utopia to eighteenth-century francophone audiences—readers for whom theses on political economy and natural religion were much more salient than More's own preoccupations with rhetoric and English law. This paper introduces Gueudeville and his oeuvre, paying particular attention to his revisions to Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce, Baron de Lahontan's 1703 Nouveaux Voyages dans l'Amérique Septentrionale. Published in 1705, Gueudeville's “revised, corrected, & augmented” version of Lahontan's Voyages foregrounds the rational and natural religion of the Huron as well as their constitutive aversion to property, to concepts of “mine” and “yours.” Gueudeville's revised version of Lahontan's Voyages purports to be an anthropological investigation as well as a study of New World political economy; it looks forward, moreover, to his edition of Utopia, framing More's work as a comparable study of political economy and anthropology. Gueudeville, in other words, renders More's Utopia legible to Enlightenment audiences, depicting Utopia not in terms of impossibility and irony but rather as a study of natural religion and attendant forms of political, devotional, and economic life. Gueudeville's edition of Utopia even proved controversial due, in part, to his insistence on the rationality as well as the possibility of Utopia. (shrink)

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sanctioned investor-paid rating agency Egan-Jones for falsely stating that it did not know its clients’ investment positions. The SEC’s action against Egan-Jones raises the broad question whether knowledge of clients’ investment positions creates a conflict of interest for investor-paid ratings. In an experimental setting, we find that investor-paid rating agencies are likely to assign credit ratings that are biased in favor of their clients’ positions, and that this effect is attenuated when the rated company (...) has a sophisticated investor base that is expected to scrutinize ratings. The effect is not conditional on the risk profile of the rated companies. Taken together, our findings suggest that a conflict of interest stemming from investors’ preferences is likely to bias ratings under investor-pays business models, but scrutiny by the company’s investor base can counteract this bias. (shrink)