Photography in Colorado was encouraged as early as 1861, when newspaper editor William Byers wrote in the Rocky Mountain News, "Secure the shadow, ere the substance perish," and roused the citizenry to take photographs of their families, friends, landscape, homes, and mills in order to document their lives and share them with others. The revised edition of Colorado: A History in Photographs draws on this rich legacy, portraying Colorado's history in images taken from the frontier era to the present, all (...) accompanied by a vivid, updated narrative. Presenting a broad view of countless aspects of life in Colorado and including 270 black-and-white photographs, this book will inform, entertain, and inspire all those who delight in learning more about the history of the Centennial State. (shrink)

Philosophers often entertain positions that they themselves do not hold. This article is an example of this. While I do not advocate localized acts of violence to combat white supremacy, I think that it is worthwhile to explore why it might be theoretically justifiable for some African Americans to commit such acts of violence. I contend that acts of localized violence are at least theoretical justifiable for some African Americans from the vantage point of racial realism. Yet, I also contend (...) that the likely detrimental consequences of engaging in such violence on economically disadvantaged African Americans outweigh its possible benefits for them; hence, it should not be used by them to combat white supremacy presently. (shrink)

i find roger ward’s interpretation of Charles Sanders Peirce’s logic, semiotics, and pragmaticism in Peirce and Religion to be not only plausible, but also compelling. What makes Ward’s interpretation of Peirce’s thought compelling, at least to me, is the story he tells about how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments shaped Peirce’s thought from the early 1860s to his death in 1914. Ward’s story accounts for how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments led Peirce to consider his study of logic and semiotics as his (...) vocation. It also accounts for how Peirce’s Trinitarian faith commitments motivated Peirce to transition from being a proponent of a nominalistic pragmatism in the 1870s to being a pragmaticist by the... (shrink)

Although the presence or absence of a pitch accent clearly can play an important role in signaling the discourse and information structure of an utterance, whether the form of an accent determines the type of information it conveys is more controversial. We used an eye‐tracking paradigm to investigate whether H*, which has been argued to signal new information, evokes different eye fixations than L+H*, which has been argued to signal the presence of contrast. Our results demonstrate that although listeners interpret (...) these accents differently, their interpretive domains overlap. L+H* creates a strong bias toward contrast referents whereas H* is compatible with both new and contrast referents. (shrink)

Jacoby Adeshei Carter has done an invaluable service in editing this critical edition of Alain Leroy Locke’s series of six lectures in Haiti delivered “from April 9 to July 10, 1943, when he was the Inter-American Exchange Professor to Haiti under the joint auspices of the American Committee for Inter-American Artistic and Intellectual Relations and the Haitian Ministry of Education”. African American Contributions to the Americas’ Cultures consists of two parts. The first part is Locke’s series of six lectures entitled (...) “The Negro’s Contribution to the Culture of the Americas.” The second part is Carter’s critical interpretative essay on Locke’s lectures entitled “‘Like Rum in the Punch’: The Quest for Cultural... (shrink)

Ethical personalism is normally associated with three of the central personalist movements in the twentieth century: the Boston personalism of Borden Parker Bowne, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rufus Burrow, Jr.; the French personalism of Emmanuel Mounier; and the personalism of Pope John Paul II. In the twenty-first century, there are a growing number of people living in North America and Europe who are not affiliated with any religious tradition, yet are still sympathetic to the Christian ethical ideas associated with (...) twentieth century personalist movements. This essay attempts to situate the best ideas from ethical personalism, specifically from Boston personalism, in a non-Christian religious humanist context. That way, non-theists who are sympathetic to Boston ethical personalism can still identify themselves as ethical personalists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Josiah Royce's "Enlightened" Antiblack Racism?Dwayne A. TunstallThis article has not been written by some ideal Roycean mediator whose interpretive acts can help heal the deep-seated racial and ethnic divisions of contemporary American society. Nor has it been written by an impartial judge adjudicating a dispute. Rather this article has been written by a Roycean scholar and a philosopher of race who feels compelled to examine Royce's social philosophy in (...) order to determine whether his positions on race in the United States of America and on racialized colonialism in the British Caribbean presuppose the legitimacy of antiblack racism. What has compelled me to examine Royce's social philosophy critically are the presentations made by Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley and Tommy J. Curry at the joint Josiah Royce Society and Personalist Discussion Group session for the 2008 American Philosophical Association (APA) Central Division meeting.For those readers who might be familiar with Royce's philosophy, this entire article may seem pointless. I can imagine quite a few readers asking themselves the following questions: Why should we waste our time reading an article investigating whether Royce's social philosophy presupposes antiblack racism? Do we not already know that Royce's philosophy is an antiracist one? This response has been nurtured by those Roycean scholars who have interpreted his philosophy to be antiracist. Indeed, this has apparently been the standard approach to interpreting Royce's philosophy since the publication of his 1905 address to the Chicago Ethical Society, "Race Questions and Prejudices," in Race Questions, Provincialism and Other American Problems. These scholars have included American pragmatists, African-American philosophers, theologians, ethicists, and philosophers of race. Over the last forty years alone, these scholars have included William T. Fontaine, Cornel West, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Alain Locke, Shannon Sullivan, and Jacquelyn Kegley. [End Page 39]In this article I argue that the standard antiracist interpretation of Royce's philosophy is a mistaken one. This is an understandable mistake, though, given that many of those who interpret Royce this way presuppose that (1) one can analyze certain concepts and principles from Royce's ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics (e.g., his theory of interpretation) apart from his concrete social philosophy and (2) one can ignore his tacit acceptance of early twentieth-century, British-style racialized colonialism. I think Kegley's writings on Royce and race are paradigmatic examples of this reading of Royce.Kegley's recent APA presentation can be read as a further articulation of one of the central contentions in her 2005 article, "Is a Coherent Racial Identity Essential to Genuine Individuals and Communities?": "… Royce advocates and provides the foundation for an anti-essentialist and nonracialist understanding of race" (216). Following her earlier analysis, Kegley's presentation takes these two contentions for granted: First, when one criticizes an essentialist conception of race (that is, regarding race as a natural kind), that person is not racist. Second, when one regards the concept of race as a social kind, one is antiracist, if not an outright nonracist. However, I think that it is possible for one to criticize an essentialist conception of race and regard race as a social kind and still accept a form of cultural antiblack racism. Moreover, I think that Royce's social philosophy is a paradigmatic example of this phenomenon, with him being a nonessentialist with regards to the concept of race but yet being a cultural antiblack racist.Here, the significance of Curry's presentation for Royce scholars is obvious. In it he asks us Royce scholars if Royce's social philosophy, with regards to race issues, is an accomplice for the cultural perpetuation of white supremacy. I think that the answer to that question hinges on whether Royce's acceptance of British-style racialized colonialism in the West Indies is based on a misguided ethnocentrism or on a form of cultural antiblack racism.I take it for granted that Royce's recommendation that Southern Euro-Americans learn from the British colonial rule of Jamaica and Trinidad in "Race Questions and Prejudices" is evidence that he had accepted the legitimacy of British-style racialized colonialism. What I would like to do now is explain how Royce's... (shrink)

This book argues that Josiah Royce bequeathed to philosophy a novel idealism based on an ethico-religious insight.This insight became the basis for an idealistic personalism, wherein the Real is the personal and a metaphysics of community is the most appropriate approach to metaphysics for personal beings, especially in an often impersonal and technological intellectual climate. -/- The first part of the book traces how Royce constructed his idealistic personalism in response to criticisms made by George Holmes Howison. That personalism is (...) interpreted as an ethical and panentheistic one, somewhat akin to Charles Hartshorne's process philosophy. The second part investigates Royce's idealistic metaphysics in general and his ethico-religious insight in particular. In the course of these investigations, the author examines how Royce's ethico-religious insight could be strengthened by incorporating the philosophical theology of Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Emmanuel Levinas's ethical metaphysics. The author concludes by briefly exploring the possibility that Royce's progressive racial anti-essentialism is, in fact, a form of cultural, antiblack racism and asks whether his cultural, antiblack racism taints his ethico-religious insight. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Josiah Royce in FocusDwayne A. TunstallJosiah Royce in Focus Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.Josiah Royce in Focus reads like a sequel to Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley’s earlier book on Royce’s public philosophy, Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities. As she did in Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities, Kegley does a remarkable job of interpreting Royce’s philosophy such that it has [End Page 127] contemporary (...) relevance for academic philosophy, conflict resolution, psychology, and the religion-science dialogue. Yet, unlike with her earlier book, Kegley devotes over two-thirds of this book to the task of weaving together Royce’s life and educational experiences with his thought. This integration of Royce’s life with his thought allows the reader to glimpse just how Royce is “a model philosopher: a scholar and a committed teacher, as well as a philosopher much concerned about public issues and basic human concerns” (xiv). Kegley does this while introducing the reader to many dimensions of Royce, including Royce the son, Royce the father, Royce the first-generation Californian, Royce the first-rate historian of California, Royce the amateur novelist, and Royce the world traveler. Amazingly, she uses Royce’s life to illuminate his philosophical thought without psychologizing Royce and hence avoids the all-too-common urge to reduce people’s philosophical ideas to mere rationalizations of their own preferences and desires. This is to be applauded in the age of Oprah, the proliferation of memoirs, and the apparent glut of self-help books.The first five chapters constitute Kegley’s portrait of Royce the person and Royce the thinker. In chapter 1, “Royce as a Frontier Californian and Intellectual Pioneer: Forging Self and Thought in a New and Developing Land,” she introduces the reader to Royce the first-generation Californian and intellectual pioneer. Here she persuasively links his California frontier upbringing; his early educational experiences in California at the Lincoln School (San Francisco) and the University of California, Berkeley; his studies in Germany; and his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins to his concerns about social conflicts and his lifelong attempt to resolve those conflicts to better the communities in which they occur (7–12).Indeed, she persuasively argues that Royce had already formulated the central insights of his philosophy by the time of his arrival at Harvard University in 1882. Kegley’s interpretation of Royce’s intellectual development owes much to Randall Auxier’s recent work on Royce’s thought. In Auxier’s interpretation of Royce’s thought, Royce had formulated the central intellectual insights of his philosophy—especially his ethics, philosophy or religion, and public philosophy—years before The Religious Aspect of Philosophy was published in 1885. This account of Royce’s intellectual development differs somewhat from Frank M. Oppenheim’s account. Oppenheim’s account depicts Royce’s intellectual development as a series of interrelated yet momentous “maximal intellectual insights.” Each of these insights marks a noticeable shift in his intellectual development. Oppenheim thinks that, of all the maximal intellectual insights Royce had throughout his career, the [End Page 128] most momentous one is the 1912 Peircean insight. This insight leads Royce to convert to Peircean semiotics and clarify his moral philosophy and philosophy of religion with Peirce’s theory of interpretation. In Oppenheim’s account, The Sources of Religious Insight (1912) and The Problem of Christianity (1913) are the glorious fruits of his Peircean insight. What Kegley has done in chapter 1 is to provide an account of Royce’s intellectual development that supersedes Oppenheim’s account. Indeed, her account of Royce’s intellectual development could possibly change how scholars study Royce’s thought, much in the same way that John E. Smith’s Royce’s Social Infinite did from the early 1950s until recently.In chapter 2, “The Self,” Kegley depicts Royce as a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century psychologist whose ideas are still relevant today. She reminds the reader throughout this chapter that Royce is a pioneer in psychology, given that his book Outlines of Psychology (1903) advances an approach to psychology that sidesteps faculty psychology and that he is one of the first psychologists, along with William James... (shrink)

Tommy J. Curry’s Another white Man’s Burden is an excellent study of Josiah Royce’s philosophy, particularly his social philosophy, within its historical milieu. I think that Curry is right with respect to his criticism of Royce’s social philosophy. As I read Another white Man’s Burden, I found myself distinguishing between the “good Royce” and the “bad Royce,” along the lines of the simplistic yet fruitful good-bad dichotomy Richard Rorty used to characterize philosophers such as John Dewey. By the “good Royce,” (...) I mean the Royce whose thought is neither necessarily anti-black and racist, nor advances the cause of Anglo-Saxon cultural superiority. By the “bad Royce,” I mean the Royce whose... (shrink)

Religious ethicists use a variety of conceptual tools from many disciplines—for example, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, philosophy, political science, cognitive science, and neuroscience—to study various religious traditions. They use these interdisciplinary tools to study how these traditions influence and are influenced by the cultural mores and societal norms of the societies in which these traditions are practiced. If William Schweiker's depiction of religious ethics in The Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics is representative of the field's emerging self-conception, then religious ethics (...) is primarily a hermeneutical and multidimensional field (See Schweiker 2-3). Schweiker thinks that this .. (shrink)

Gabriel Marcel’s reflective method is animated by his extraphilosophical commitment to battle the ever-present threat of dehumanization in late Western modernity. Unfortunately, Marcel neglected to examine what is perhaps the most prevalent threat of dehumanization in Western modernity: antiblack racism. Without such an account, Marcel’s reflective method is weakened because it cannot live up to its extraphilosophical commitment. Tunstall remedies this shortcoming in his eloquent new volume.

Despite differences between Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism and Dewey's pragmatism, they both conceive of “creative democracy” as an ethico-religious ideal. Accordingly, this article examines how Deweyan creative democracy is an ethico-religious ideal, in the sense of being a religious humanist ideal. This article concludes with an explanation of how a contemporary Deweyan democrat living in the United States cannot help but recognize the tragicomic undercurrents of creative democracy.

In Gabriel Marcel and American Philosophy, David W. Rodick investigates Gabriel Marcel's relationship to classical American philosophy—more specifically, to Josiah Royce's idealism, William James's radical empiricism, William Ernest Hocking's empiricism, and Henry G. Bugbee's experiential naturalism—to provide Marcel scholars and scholars of classical American philosophy with a fruitful perspective for understanding Marcel's thought. He also seeks to capture Marcel's dynamic and concrete approach to philosophizing along with examining its "relevance to the contemporary world—a world in which philosophy, confined to the (...) ivory tower, remains at risk of becoming somewhat of a caricature of itself". In... (shrink)

Moving toward a possible transatlantic free trade area (TAFTA), the European Union (EU) and the United States reached an accord in December 1995 to collaborate on 150 policy issues. Regional market integration arrangements involve the acceptance of international policy regimes defining conditions for cooperation and harmonization. Because multinational enterprises (MNEs) will likely increase in size and global scope, regional and global regime development efforts for defining corporate social responsibility and performance norms will be needed. In light of these trends, this (...) article focuses on a case study of an emerging, global anticorruption norm among countries of diverse cultures, interests, and values. Although, historically, a norm against the bribery of domestic public officials has been virtually universal, there was little prohibition against bribery by business of foreign public officials. Regionally adopted anticorruption norms require national implementation and enforcement, and they must operate globally to be effective. Implications for other norms are considered. (shrink)

When thinking about Frank M. Oppenheim’s legacy, one cannot help but think, first and foremost, about his many contributions to Royce scholarship. Yet I personally have had some difficulty imagining how to characterize Oppenheim’s contributions to Royce scholarship until late 2013. Prior to that time, the more I thought about how to characterize his contributions to Royce scholarship, the less I became able to imagine an appropriate characterization of them. Then, on an autumn afternoon in 2013, I stumbled across a (...) Tumblr post, written by Missy H. Dunaway, that caught my attention. The title of that post was “‘The Lonely’ Lighthouse Keeper.” Dunaway’s post was an entertaining yet sad account of her fascination with... (shrink)

The Association of American Colleges & Universities has a guiding principle that presidents, chief academic officers, deans, and faculty at its member institutions can follow to cultivate diverse, inclusive, and equitable communities at their institutions. This principle constitutes the “Making Excellence Inclusive” initiative, which is a component of the AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise initiative. Taking the “Making Excellence Inclusive” initiative as my starting point, I challenge the way that diversity and inclusion seem to be conceived of by many (...) people at colleges and universities. I then imagine how genuinely inclusive and equitable communities can be cultivated at colleges and universities by taking social justice seriously. (shrink)

In Common Ground, Anthony Neal examines the role that the ideas of consciousness and consciousness-raising play in the writings of Howard Thurman and Huey Newton. He examines these ideas from a broadly Afrocentric framework in which the concerns, interests, and perspectives of Africans--whether they reside on the continent or live in the African diaspora--are the legitimate and central subjects of scholarly study. This approach warrants Neal’s interpretation of Thurman’s and Newton’s writings as fitting within the “African Freedom Aesthetic,” in which (...) the aesthetic expressions of transcendence, transformation, human consciousness, and collective will have become the means by which Africans living under oppressive conditions during the modern period could work to liberate themselves from those conditions. (shrink)

In this article, I contend that there are at least two contemporary types of Kantian transcendental pragmatism: Sami Pihlström’s naturalistic transcendentalpragmatism and Josiah Royce’s absolute pragmatism. Each one of these transcendental pragmatisms represents one side of the Kantian transcendentaltradition. Pihlström’s naturalistic transcendental pragmatism represents the side of the Kantian transcendental tradition that is familiar to most philosophers, namely, the transcendental inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of human experience. Royce’s absolute pragmatism represents the other, more neglected, side of the (...) Kantian transcendental tradition, namely, the transcendental analysis of the meaningfulness of moral, aesthetic, and religious experience, especially theistic religious experience. I contend that Royce’s pragmatism is more representative of the Kantian transcendental tradition than is Pihlström’s pragmatism. (shrink)

This paper seeks to make a contribution toward a general theory of responsibility and irresponsibility. Such a theory, or framework or model, addresses therelationship between responsibility and irresponsibility. The motive for the effort is that the literature on business ethics, corporate citizenship, and corporate social responsibility combines negative prohibitions with positive requirements and at both individual and organizational levels of action. A prohibition takes the form “do not” expressed in laws and ethics. A requirement takes the form “should” or “ought” (...) expressed in theories of responsibility and stakeholder engagement. Armstrong (1977) points out that actually preventing harm may be socially much more valuable than promoting contribution. (shrink)

Since the publication of The Man-Not in July of 2017, the wealth of empirical information challenging the conclusions of intersectionality and Black masculinity studies has gained the public’s attention. The Man-Not argues that in western patriarchal societies Black males and other racialized men and boys are targeted for extermination and social ostracization. Following the work of social dominance theorists and Global South Masculinities, Black Male Studies argues that patriarchy places outgroup-racialized men at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Abstract:In this essay, I respond to Chris Voparil’s reconstruction of Richard Rorty’s engagement with Josiah Royce’s pragmatism in chapter 4 of Reconstructing Pragmatism. I first express my thoughts about Voparil’s three main claims about Rorty’s reconstruction of Royce’s pragmatism. I then mention what I took to be the least interesting part of this chapter. Finally, I propose that Alain Locke’s pragmatism, and more specifically his approach to resolving conflicting loyalties and his appropriation of Royce’s concept of wise provincialism, could function (...) as a bridge between Royce’s absolute pragmatism and Rorty’s pragmatism. Readers should take the last part of this essay as a prolegomenon to a study of Locke’s appropriation of Royce’s concept of wise provincialism. (shrink)

A moral core places ethical considerations superior to business interest. This core must include voluntary prescriptions in various forms to “buy higher, sell lower.” International business ethics must somehow address the tradeoff between corporate financial and stakeholder interests. Corporation codes of conduct generally do not define a moral core. Corporate citizenship is typically strategic investment in markets and reputation. There are two practical paths for formulating a moral core. One path is civil lawsuits against multinationals that, successful or not, increase (...) corporate moral sensitivity. The other path is evolution of multilateral codes of conductembedding negotiated norms for guidance of corporate behavior. Four key cases illustrate: (1) World Bank approach for combating corruption in Chad; (2) a lawsuit against Unocal alleging human rights abuses by Myanmar; (3) a lawsuit against ChevronTexaco alleging environmental and community damages in Ecuadorian Amazonia; and (4) demand by developing countries for relaxing intellectual property rights. (shrink)

Three times in Book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says desire partakes of reason in a way. There is a consensus view in the literature about what that claim means: desire has no intrinsic rationality, but can partake of reason by being blindly obedient to the commands of reason. I argue this consensus view is mistaken: for Aristotle, adult human desire has its own intrinsic rationality, and while it is to be obedient to reason, it is not (...) blind obedience, for when reason tells desire to obey, it includes an explanation supporting its order which desire can at least potentially understand. Thus, the nature of human desire, and also of the characteristic interaction of desire and reason, is much different than it is standardly taken to be. (shrink)

The theme of this issue of Ethical Perspectives is the French tradition in liberal thought, and the unique contribution that this tradition can make to debates in contemporary liberalism. It is inspired by a colloquium held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in December of 2008 entitled “In Search of a Lost Liberalism: Constant, Tocqueville, and the singularity of French Liberalism.” This colloquium was held in conjunction with the retirement of Leuven professor and former Dean of the Institute of Philosophy, André (...) Van de Putte, who found much inspiration in this tradition. A revised version of his valedictory lecture from the conference serves as the final contribution to this issue. Much contemporary liberal political philosophy is currently done in conversation with a line of liberal thinkers starting with John Locke, running through Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and culminating in the work of John Rawls and his followers. The reasons for the enormous appeal of this philosophical tradition are, among other things, the combination of the central role of the intuitively appealing value of individual liberty with a strong rationalistic, universalistic, and normative character. The thread running through most of these liberal theories is a commitment to what the French liberal Benjamin Constant referred to as “the liberty of the moderns,” that is, liberty in a negative sense, as a lack of interference in one’s activity from others and from government. This focus has expanded over time to include a richer body of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, for instance, in the work of liberal thinkers who have tried to integrate the insights of communitarian thought and discourse ethics in their work. However, the emphasis on individual liberty in the negative sense continues to be the normative and theoretical touchstone and default position for many contemporary liberal theories. The limitation of the canon of liberal thought to the aforementioned authors and themes deprives the contemporary debate of a rich source of ideas: the French liberal tradition. Montesquieu, considered to be the father of this tradition, provides a good example of how it can enrich current debates in liberal theory. Montesquieu’s work evinces a keen eye for the dynamics of power relations and the limitations of the power of the better rational argument. His insight that power can sometimes only be checked by an equal and opposing power, so that a system of separation and balance of powers is necessary in order to preserve liberty, is reflected in the foundations of most modern democracies. Montesquieu also argues that contingent environmental, historical, social and economic conditions play a dramatic role in determining what kind of government is appropriate for a particular society. On his view, ignoring these facts when framing a government can inadvertently end in despotism. Montesquieu’s observations challenge us to reexamine some of contemporary liberalism’s universalist and rationalist claims. Benjamin Constant is most famous for his distinction between two kinds of liberty: the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. The ancient form of liberty manifested itself in the active political participation of citizens in the ancient republic. While this form of government and decision-making was suitable for small, homogeneous city-states, Constant argues that it is impracticable for large modern nation-states. Hence, the concept of modern liberty shifts to an emphasis on the rule of law and the non-interference of the state in private matters. This form of liberty is familiar to us from contemporary liberalism – and Constant cherishes this form of freedom as much as any liberal does today. However, his position is complex: he also argues that the liberty of the ancients should not be neglected. Active political participation is needed to ensure that the government is executing its duty of preserving the modern form of liberty by publicly pointing out violations. The contemporary relevance of Constant’s work is clear when we consider the alleged “democratic deficit” that plagues the EU and international institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. Not only does this democratic deficit threaten the modern form of liberty by placing decision-making processes out of sight of the people, it also threatens citizens’ sense of self-respect derived from self-governance. Constant’s argument for the necessity of combining the liberty of the ancients with that of the moderns provides a fruitful resource for confronting these contemporary issues. Tocqueville’s work on liberalism benefits from his opportunity to observe a society founded on liberal democratic principles – the United States of America – in action. In his Democracy in America, he examines the social consequences, both intended and unintended, of building a society on ‘the equality of conditions’, as he defines ‘democracy’. Tocqueville sees a tension between the democratic value of equality and the aristocratic value of the rule of the best. He observes that democratic societies do not necessarily choose the best leaders and instead promote mediocrity instead of virtue, talent, and excellence. Democracy also confronts citizens with the threat of ‘soft despotism’, where a government that preserves the outer signs of the liberty of the moderns nevertheless controls the behavior of its citizens in minute detail through a system of detailed rules ostensibly aimed at their welfare. This paternalism is an even more insidious threat to liberal values than the hard variety of despotism, since it is so difficult to detect and done in the name of liberal values themselves. Taking Tocqueville’s observations seriously would add complexity to attempts to theorize about the modern social-democratic welfare state. The contributions to this issue supplement and critique mainstream liberal thought and its relation to contemporary issues through a serious engagement with the French liberal tradition. Annelien De Dijn’s contribution discusses Bertrand de Jouvenel, a lesser-known 20th Century representative of the French political tradition she terms ‘aristocratic liberalism’. This tradition has its roots in the work of Montesquieu, and emphasizes the importance of intermediary bodies, most importantly the aristocracy, in providing a check to the top-down power of despotic state authorities and the bottom-up power of revolutionary leveling tendencies, both of which threaten liberty. De Dijn situates Jouvenel in this tradition, but then indicates an important difference between his thought and that of his predecessors: his most significant work, On Power, is not only on French history, but on European history. Pointing to the enthusiastic reception of this work in the Anglophone world, she suggests that the rise of totalitarianism in Europe gave the anti-totalitarian features of aristocratic liberalism a broader appeal. Valentino Lumowa’s paper concerns Constant’s classic text, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Lumowa argues that in order to understand Constant’s piece, we must be aware that its two parts were written under different historical circumstances and decipher the argumentative thrust inherent in the text. Following Stephen Holmes, he argues that to understand the shift Constant made in the second part of the text, we should read it within the context of the increasing influence of the ultra-Royalists in the legislature during the Bourbon Restoration. However, in contrast to Holmes, he contends that the spirit of both civic and individual freedom, which enlivens representative system, is the backbone of the text in its unity. Demin Duan’s essay investigates an apparent ambivalence between liberal and imperialist tendencies in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, which has already drawn some attention from Tocquevillian scholars. These interpretations of Tocqueville and his writings on empire generally agree that Tocqueville stands in a recognized tradition of liberalism, which is characterized by respect for human rights, individual freedom and a sense of universal humanism. On this standard view, Tocqueville’s support of imperialism represents nothing but an unfortunate breach of his own otherwise consistent liberal thinking. Duan’s article questions this standard position. By questioning the assumption of Tocqueville’s liberalism in the first place, he tries to gauge the influence of both the old republican tradition and the new liberal perspective on his thinking. In conclusion, he argues that Tocqueville’s overall thought, especially his notion of freedom, is very much informed by an old republican tradition. His support of French imperialism could be better understood from this perspective rather than be rendered simply as a deviation from liberal norms. Pawel Marczewski’s contribution is an attempt to show that Tocqueville’s conception of liberty transcends the divisions between negative and positive aspects of freedom. He begins by juxtaposing this conception with the opposition drawn by Constant between liberty of the ancients and liberty of the moderns. While Tocqueville and Constant shared a concern for the preservation of individual rights, Tocqueville was much more reluctant to accept the modern loss of the communal dimension of liberty. He did not accept the view that jouissances privées, private pleasures, are the main compensation that the modern world has to offer for the lost ancient treasure of political participation. The essay then looks into the relevance of Tocqueville’s standpoint for current debates between liberal defenders of negative freedom and republican advocates of freedom as non-domination. Participants on both sides of the debate seem to be so devoted to showing that their particular approach provides the best guarantees against actual and possible threats to liberty that they overlook the fact that their definitions of freedom remain significantly similar. By arguing that ‘to be free is to be guided by one’s own will’, contemporary republicans, as well as their liberal counterparts, move along the lines drawn by Constant towards private pleasures. By questioning the inevitability of this turn, Tocqueville provides us with a valuable contribution to these discussions in contemporary political philosophy. Finally, André Van de Putte’s contribution, an adaptation of his emeritus speech that closed the conference on French Liberalism, appeals to Tocqueville in order to draw attention to the importance of intermediary, dialogical bodies in mitigating the implicit despotic tendencies of the democratic drive to equality. In Tocqueville’s view, the transition from the feudal corporate inequality to democratic individual equality was not a clean break. Rather, this transition is a continual process of democratization that is driven by a desire for equality, or egalité des conditions. This dissolution of distinctions of estate, class and status has the unintended consequence of concentrating the diffuse power of these entities into a centralized state, which is responsible for ensuring the equality of all under the law. This process leaves increasingly isolated and atomized individuals to face the power of a monolithic state in defense of their freedom, and moves toward a soft, paternalistic despotism. Constant’s freedom of the moderns is not sufficient to protect individuals from this centralized power. Democracy also requires the political freedom of the ancients. Van de Putte argues for a system in which atomized individuals organize themselves into intermediary bodies that, in a Montesquieuian balance of powers, can enter into dialogue with each other and the state on more equitable terms. Van de Putte’s contribution closes with a plea for a conception of democracy as a regime of dialogue. (shrink)

:International business norms do not exist. Content and development of such norms is a significant research question for business ethics scholarship. Any norms must address difficult practical and moral problems facing multinational enterprises. The author’s thesis is as follows. A key circumstance is that international relations remain a Hobbesian state of nature. The theoretical solution of a global sovereignty for norm formulation and enforcement is unlikely. The business ethics literature proposes other insightful but theoretical and conflicting solutions to abstract wealth-responsibility (...) and universalism-relativism controversies. Theoretical convergence seems unlikely. Evolution of multiple international policy regimes fragmented by policy arena is more probable. Regimes will typically be neither morals by agreement nor a morality of the marketplace. Regime development can occur in various other ways. Moral leadership, by firms, stakeholders, nongovernmental organizations or governments, can be a vital force. Formal ethical theories can inform and guide such leadership initiatives. This process perspective is applied to several recent case examples cited here as supporting evidence: anti-corruption, labor, environmental, human rights, and fiduciary responsibility initiatives. (shrink)

A Great Plains land ethic is shaped by an intimate knowledge of and appreciation for the evolution, ecology, and aesthetics of the plains landscape. The landscape evokes a sense of wonder and mystery suggested by the word “sacrament.” The biblical concept of “covenant” points to God as a community‐forming power, a creative process that has evolved into the earth community to which we humans belong. In contrast to an anthropocentric ethic which emphasizes human dominion over nature, a Theo‐centric land ethic (...) seeks a balance, reflected in Genesis 1–3, between humans who are membersofthe earth community and moral agents accountable to Godforthe earth. A land ethic identifies concrete practices ofmetanoiaand healing: agricultural practices to address the loss and degradation of soil; conservation and protection of water sources; utilization of wind and solar energy; and prescribed burning to restore processes vital to the prairie ecosystem. The concept of subsidiarity suggests that practices ofmetanoiaand healing are a combination of wise public policy balanced by personal, family, church, business, and community responsibility. (shrink)

Engineered microbes are of great potential utility in biotechnology and basic research. In principle, a cell can be built from scratch by assembling small molecule sets with auto‐catalytic properties. Alternatively, DNA can be isolated or directly synthesized and molded into a synthetic genome using existing genomic blueprints and molecular biology tools. Activating such a synthetic genome will yield a synthetic cell. Here we examine obstacles associated with this latter approach using a model system whereby a donor genome from H. influenzae (...) is fragmented, and the pieces are then modified and reassembled stepwise in an E. coli host cell. There are obstacles associated with this strategy related to DNA transfer, DNA replication, cross‐talk in gene regulation and compatibility of gene products between donor and host. Encouragingly, analysis of gene expression indicates widespread transcription of H. influenzae genes in E. coli, and analysis of gap locations in H. influenzae and other microbial genome assemblies reveals few genes routinely incompatible with E. coli. In conclusion, rebuilding and booting a genome remains a feasible and pragmatic approach to creating a synthetic microbial cell. BioEssays 29:580–590, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

When we read, we do not fixate on each word! How does that work? By deep theory those sorts of decisions must be the result of complex decisions involving the specific “word,” the linguistic context in which it appears, and visual information. But is reading really all that difficult? After all, simple heuristics models of reading seem to do sort of okay by only considering the additive effects of word and context. Entropy measures do well at predicting word “skipping” and (...) suggest that “word frequency” may play the dominant role in the “decision” to skip or not skip! (shrink)

This paper examines prospects for and content of a global regime for human rights. Competing schools of thought forecast convergence and divergence of national standards under stress of globalization. No such regime exists, and there is no compelling theory of international corporate social responsibility. However, elements of an emerging global regime can be identified and partially overlap with environmental protection issues. This regime is highly fragmented, underdeveloped, and only partially enforceable—but it is in development. The UN Global Compact, the Global (...) Reporting Initiative (GRI), ISO 26000 (expected in 2010), the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) of 1789 and the permanent international criminal court established in 2002 are illustrations of such elements. The third Ruggie Report, issued 2008, is an important summary of conditions and proposes a strategy for forward progress. Human rights impose important obligations on multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating across highly diverse political, legal, and cultural realities. (shrink)

A new perceptual paradigm is emerging that views the universe as a living system that is being regenerated in its totality moment by moment. Scientific evidence for this view is presented as well as complementary insights from the world's spiritual traditions. The implications of this view of reality for our sense of identity, way of living, and evolutionary purpose are considered.

Explore the importance of love with the youngest readers in a wonderfully accessible way. Even little children have big questions about life. Plato believed showing and receiving love makes us wise, and Love with Plato brings his philosophy to the youngest thinkers. Asking young readers what being loved feels like to them and how they can show others love prompts questions about how we treat one another and ourselves. This book will lead to inspiring conversations about loving people for what (...) is on the inside, and helping others do the same. Look for all six Big Ideas for Little Philosophers board books: Equality with Simone de Beauvoir, Happiness with Aristotle,Imagination with René Descartes, Kindness with Confucius, Love with Plato, and Truth with Socrates. (shrink)

A recent literature applies economic reasoning to restrict corporate social responsibility (CSR) to profitable opportunities. The underlying theory of the firmassumes widespread public company ownership and a net positive contribution to social welfare in relatively unfettered markets. This modern economic approach posits strict fiduciary responsibility of agents. Management, in this fiduciary role, should have no CSR discretion beyond the requirements of minimalist laws and customary ethics. Any profitable CSR option can be undertaken. Any unprofitable CSR action is defined as discretionary (...) altruism prohibited to fiduciary agents and recommended against for shareowners acting through the corporate form. The modern economic position shifts all unprofitable social issues into the sphere of public policy—which is then influenced by business on the basis of economic self-interest. There are two points of relaxation in this position. First, a firm may need to practice prudential altruism to forestall more costly action by governments and stakeholders. Second, management must consider productivity effects of employee sentiments about social issues and stakeholders. (shrink)

Duane Cady views warism and pacifism as polar extremes on a continuum that embraces a full spectrum of ethical positions on the morality of war and peace. Realizing that he could not intellectually defend the notions of just-war theory, he found that he was a reluctant pacifist. In this new edition of From Warism to Pacifism, Cady continues to expose the pervasive, subconscious warism that is the dominant ideology in modern Western culture. He explores the changes over the last (...) twenty years—from the end of the Cold War to the ongoing “war on terror,” as well as Barack Obama winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. Like racism and sexism, the uncritical presumption that war is morally justifiable, even morally required, misguides our attitudes and institutions. In its place, Cady proposes the development of a positive concept of peace. Citing common objections to pacifist values, he describes peace as something more than the mere absence of war and demonstrates that pacifism is a defensible position. (shrink)

This book presents a reading of Martin Heidegger's philosophy as an effort to strike a middle position between the philosophies of Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche. Duane Armitage interprets the history of Western philosophy as comprising a struggle over the meaning of "being," and argues that this struggle is ultimately between materialism and idealism, and, in the end, between atheism and theism. This work therefore concerns the question of the meaning of the so called "death of God" in the context (...) of contemporary Continental Philosophy.. (shrink)