Raimond Gaita's _Good and Evil_ is one of the most important, original and provocative books on the nature of morality to have been published in recent years. It is essential reading for anyone interested in what it means to talk about good and evil. Gaita argues that questions about morality are inseparable from the preciousness of each human being, an issue we can only address if we place the idea of remorse at the centre of moral life. Drawing on (...) an astonishing range of thinkers and writers, including Plato, Wittgenstein, George Orwell and Primo Levi, Gaita also reflects on the place of reason and truth in morality and ultimately how questions about good and evil are connected to the meaning of our lives. This revised edition of _Good and Evil_ includes a substantial new preface and afterword by the author. (shrink)

The Holocaust and attempts to deny it, racism, murder, the case of Mary Bell. How can we include these and countless other examples of evil within our vision of a common humanity? These painful human incongruities are precisely what Raimond Gaita boldly harmonizes in his powerful new book, _A Common Humanity_. Hatred with forgiveness, evil with love, suffering with compassion, and the mundane with the precious. Gaita asserts that our conception of humanity cannot be based upon the empty language (...) of individual rights when it is our shared feelings of grief, hope, love, guilt, shame and remorse that offer a more potent foundation for common understanding. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Simon Weil, Primo Levi, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch and Sigmund Freud, Gaita creates a beautifully written and provocative new picture of our common humanity. (shrink)

In this marvellous book, Raimond Gaita discusses ideas about love and hatred, good and evil, guilt and forgiveness. Moving, wise and inspiring, A Common Humanity explores personal, political and philosophical ideas about the kind of society and the sort of public conversation we might have in the twenty-first century. 'Raimond Gaita's insights are original and his prose is as eloquent as it is affecting.' Economist, Books of the Year, 2000.

In this lyrical and beautifully written book, Raimond Gaita tells inspirational, poignant, sometimes funny but never sentimental stories of the dogs, cats and cockatoos that lived and died within his own family. _The Philosopher's Dog_ is above all a book about our creatureliness and its place in the understanding of our humanity.

This article argues for the recovery and re-incorporation of lost voices and debates into the history of political thought by focusing on the issue of sovereignty. It begins by examining why such a narrow understanding of the canon has come to dominate the sub-discipline and argues for critical approaches that treat the past as a “contested terrain” rather than an unfolding plot. It then turns to early twentieth-century Britain as an example of an era when thinkers who have been largely (...) forgotten by today’s political theorists argued loudly about the future of state sovereignty. It next focuses on a 1916 exchange of essays entitled “The Nature of the State in View of Its External Relations” by Delisle Burns, Bertrand Russell, and G.D.H. Cole, as an example of some of the most innovative and radical ideas to emerge from the period. The article concludes by arguing that re-engaging the work of these forgotten thinkers can broaden our conceptual horizons about sovereignty, speak to some of the most urgent issues of our time, and force open the concept of “the political” to radical reinterpretation. (shrink)

Fessard, G. Jeanne Hersch, genèse d'une œuvre.--Muralt, A. de. Phénoménologie et métaphysique.--Philonenko, A. Leibniz et le platonisme.--Christoff, D. Représentation et décision dans la temporalité selon Kant.--Tilliette, X. De l'illusion au savoir, la philosophie.--Widmer, G. Variations kierkegaardiennes sur l'édifiant.--Dufour-Kowalska, G. L'imagination maîtresse de vérité.--Leyvraz, J.-P. Des noms.--Piguet, J.-C. Liberté esthétique et liberté éthique.--Schaerer, R. Le philosophe entre oui et non.--Scheurer, P.-B. Vues nouvelles sur la science du temps et l'histoire.--Starobinski, J. La littérature et l'irrationnel.--Aron, R. De la libéralisation.--Werner, E. La (...) digue et la vie.--Cottier, G. La fascination du vide, éléments pour un diagnostic. (shrink)

Dans sa traduction partielle du Timée de Platon, Cicéron traduit le terme grec οὐσία par aeternitas et materia. Ces choix de traduction sont particulièrement intéressants à étudier puisqu’il n’existe pas de traduction fixe d’οὐσία en latin à l’époque de Cicéron – il n’est, en effet, pas à l’origine du néologisme essentia. Pourquoi Cicéron choisit-il deux termes latins pour traduire un même mot grec? Pourquoi deux mots si différents à la fois l’un de l’autre et du terme οὐσία? Quelle compréhension du (...) concept d’οὐσία, mais aussi du Timée, cette traduction induit-elle? Nous étudions dans cet article chacune des deux traductions latines et tentons de montrer que Cicéron est influencé par le contexte dans ses choix de traduction. Dans le « prélude » du discours de Timée, il traduit οὐσία par aeternitas lorsqu’il considère que le terme grec, opposé à γένεσις, correspond au participe substantivé τὸ ὂν ἀεί, γένεσιν δὲ οὐκ ἔχον. En traduisant οὐσία par aeternitas en 29c3, il fait du sème de l’éternité une caractéristique discriminante d’οὐσία, qui correspond également au modèle intelligible du monde. Dans le cas de materia, le mot latin traduit l’οὐσία dans le cadre du mélange de l’âme du monde par le démiurge dans un cratère. Cicéron choisit le terme materia qui sert généralement, en contexte philosophique, à désigner une matière disponible pour prendre la forme qu’on veut lui donner, selon différentes doctrines. Nous tentons de montrer que le contexte de la métaphore du mélange pousse Cicéron à considérer le terme οὐσία comme une « substance » qui entre dans la composition d’un mélange. Ces deux traductions d’οὐσία montrent que l’Arpinate choisit chacun des termes latins selon le sens précis qu’il donne à οὐσία, en fonction du contexte philosophique mais aussi en fonction du registre du discours. (shrink)

I distinguish what I call ?minimal narrative? from narrative of the kind that might disclose a person's identity in biography or autobiography. The latter exists in what I call ?the realm of meaning?; a realm in which, in ways I try to make clear, form and content cannot be separated. The realm of meaning is also the realm in which we develop an understanding of what it means to lead a human life lucidly responsive to the defining facts of the (...) human condition and, interdependently with that, our sense of what it means to wrong someone. To show to what degree assumptions about the realm of meaning set the stage for our understanding of what it is to wrong someone, of the nature of biography and autobiography and of what it is to learn morally from someone's example, I detail the conceptual structure of a certain kind of racist perception. The racist's distinction between ?us? and ?them?, is essentially the distinction between lives that are lived in the realm of meaning and lives that are not. Much of moral philosophy, I argue, takes as it starting point a perception of human life that is little different from the racist's perception of the lives of those whom he regards as less than fully human. (shrink)

The popular view of shareholder activism focuses on shareholder resolutions and the shareholder vote via proxy statements at the annual meeting, which is treated as a “David vs. Goliath” showdown between the small group of socially responsible investors and the powerful corporation. This article goes beyond the popular view to examine where the real action typically occurs – in the Dialogue process where corporations and shareholder activist groups mutually agree to ongoing communications to deal with a serious social issue. Use (...) of the capitalized word “Dialogue” is intended to distinguish this formal process between corporations and shareholders from all the other forms of dialogue or two-way communication exchanged between a corporation and its stakeholders. The phenomenon of Dialogue between a corporation and dissident shareholders has not been analyzed in the academic literature or in the popular press because it occurs behind the scenes and out of sight from media scrutiny. Yet this is where a great deal of social change initiated by shareholder activists is negotiated. This article contributes both theoretically and empirically to the study of Dialogues between shareholder activists and corporations. We explain how Dialogues occur in the context of the shareholder resolution process and examine two Dialogues that focus on international labor issues in two industries. Then data on Dialogues during the period, 1999–2005, from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are analyzed. This research contributes to knowledge about the Dialogue process and the emerging literature on corporation–stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

This article focuses on the question of whether Social Issues in Management (SIM) is a “field” and, if so, what kind, emphasizing specifically the recent literature on corporate social responsibility and performance (CSR/csp). Fields are defined in part by coherent bodies of knowledge that serve as guideposts for current research, and so the authors construct a simple model of CSR/csp scholarship, illustrating the relevant categories with representative publications. The authors conclude that SIM is a “low-paradigm” field but is not recognized (...) or accepted as a field by many scholars who write about CSR/csp from “outside” the field. This analysis points to the need for SIM scholars to continue to integrate useful ideas from other fields, and also to critique the work of scholars who address “failings” or “gaps” in SIM research without appropriately dealing with the existing SIM literature. The article concludes with some ideas for sustaining the institutional legitimacy of SIM and for challenging those who would “reinvent” a field with a long and fruitful history, including paying careful attention to journal review processes and the content of publications in prominent journals. (shrink)

Suppose that someone writes an argument on a blackboard which leads to the conclusion that he may, at that time, be dreaming. He goes over it, considers its validity, the truth of its premises, its assumptions and so on, and then to his dismay, he judges that he is compelled to conclude that he may be dreaming. He goes over the argument repeatedly and carefully, but finds the conclusion ‘inescapable’. If reviewing the argument on the blackboard may be taken as (...) an analogue of reviewing thoughts before one's mind, then his condition seems like the condition which Descartes describes at the beginning of the Second Meditation: ‘The meditation of yesterday filled my mind with so many doubts that it is no longer in my power to forget them. And yet I do not see in what manner I can resolve them; and just as if I had all of a sudden fallen into very deep water, I am so disconcerted that I can neither make certain of setting my feet on the bottom, nor can I swim and support myself on the surface.’. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article se propose de préciser la portée exacte de la critique sellarsienne du mythe du donné quant aux rapports entre science et perception, et ce à la lumière d’une confrontation avec la phénoménologie et, plus précisément, avec la manière dont Merleau-Ponty traite de leurs relations. Si Sellars nie bien dans Empirisme et philosophie de l’esprit que la perception puisse jouer aucun rôle fondationnel pour la science, s’il semble dans certains textes penser que la science doit se constituer indépendamment (...) de toute référence à l’expérience perceptuelle, apparaît pourtant dans sa philosophie l’idée d’une référence du langage – et donc du langage scientifique – au perçu, constitué pour lui de sensations. Or cette idée, si elle ne prend dans sa philosophie qu’une place relativement marginale, nous semble pourtant fondamentale pour y assurer le lien de la science au réel, et rendre possible par là même la résolution d’un problème qui constitua l’un des fils rouges de la pensée sellarsienne : l’intégration de la nature qualitative de l’expérience dans la science moderne. (shrink)

Nietzsche's philosophy - at once revolutionary, erudite and deep - reaches into all spheres of the arts. Well into a second century of influence, the profundity of his ideas and the complexity of his writings still determine Nietzsche's power to engage his readers. His first book, "The Birth of Tragedy", presents us with a lively inquiry into the existential meaning of Greek tragedy. We are confronted with the idea that the awful truth of our existence can be revealed through tragic (...) art, whereby our relationship to the world transfigures from pessimistic despair into sublime elation and affirmation. It is a landmark text in his oeuvre and remains an important book both for newcomers to Nietzsche and those wishing to enrich their appreciation of his mature writings. "Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy" provides a clear account of the text and explores the philosophical, literary and historical influences bearing upon it. Each chapter examines part of the text, explaining the ideas presented and assessing relevant scholarly points of interpretation. The book will be an invaluable guide to readers in Philosophy, Literary Studies and Classics coming to "The Birth of Tragedy" for the first time. (shrink)

A major objection to epistemic infinitism is that it seems to make justification impossible. For if there is an infinite chain of reasons, each receiving its justification from its neighbour, then there is no justification to inherit in the first place. Some have argued that the objection arises from misunderstanding the character of justification. Justification is not something that one reason inherits from another; rather it gradually emerges from the chain as a whole. Nowhere however is it made clear what (...) exactly is meant by emergence. The aim of this paper is to fill that lacuna: we describe a detailed procedure for the emergence of justification that enables us to see exactly how justification surfaces from a chain of reasons. (shrink)

This article begins with an explanation of how moral development for organizations has parallels to Kohlberg's categorization of the levels of individual moral development. Then the levels of organizational moral development are integrated into the literature on corporate social performance by relating them to different stakeholder orientations. Finally, the authors propose a model of organizational moral development that emphasizes the role of top management in creating organizational processes that shape the organizational and institutional components of corporate social performance. This article (...) represents one approach to linking the distinct streams of business ethics and business-and-society research into a more complete understanding of how managers and firms address complex ethical and social issues. (shrink)

For more than three decades the incomparable voice of Raimond Gaita has been summoning us to new conversations that deepen our understanding of what matters most to human life and awaken the sense of our common humanity. For Gaita, we are never more fully alive than when we are fully present to one another in conversation. In a time when modes of communication tend to superficiality and self-promotion, when political debates are increasingly inured to lies and even violence, and (...) the moral demands of dialogue give way to a torrent of competing monologues, Gaita's invitation to rediscover what genuine conversation requires of us could not be more timely. These collected writings at once invite us into that conversation and enact its severe demands. Gaita asks us to confront the distinctive evil of genocide, to examine the true cost of the 'War on Terror', to interrogate what justice requires in response to Australia's dispossession of its First Peoples, to understand our need for truth in politics, especially during war, to see what is at stake in the decline of the universities, to grasp what was lost during the Black Summer bushfires, and to reckon with the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic-when we learned, he writes, 'how much we needed to touch and hold other people'. Gaita's astonishing range of concerns is held together by the consistency and unrelenting tenderness of his moral vision. To see the world through Gaita's eyes is to discover, once again, what it means to love the world and to remain faithful to it. He tells us that an unconditional love of the world is the deepest form of hope and the truest source of our energies to honour the demands of justice. This is how we learn to be human"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

In "The View from Above," Jeanne Haffner traces the evolution of the science of social space from the interwar period to the 1970s, illuminating in particular the role of aerial photography in this new way of conceptualizing socio-spatial ...

Based on hierarchical classification and logistic regression of early US and French COVID-19 clinical trials we show that despite the registration of a large number of trials, only a minority had characteristics usually associated with providing robust and relevant evidence.

The possible relationship between widespread unauthorized copying of microcomputer software (also known as software piracy) and level of moral judgment is examined through analysis of over 350 survey questionnaires that included the Defining Issues Test as a measure of moral development. It is hypothesized that the higher one''s level of moral judgment, the less likely that one will approve of or engage in unauthorized copying. Analysis of the data indicate a high level of tolerance toward unauthorized copying and limited support (...) for the hypothesis. The most plausible explanation for these findings is that software copying is perceived as an issue of low moral intensity. This study calls into question the software industry''s strategy of concentrating exclusively on institutional compliance with copyright rules, rather than working to raise the perceived moral intensity about software piracy at the individual level. As long as the issue remains low in moral intensity, the industry cannot expect significant shifts in copying behaviors. Individuals must become more aware of and concerned about the nature and magnitude of harm to society and to the rightful copyright owners from unauthorized copying before their attitudes and behaviors come to reflect higher levels of moral judgment. (shrink)

L'originalité de Jeanne Hersch est de réorganiser le développement de la philosophie en Occident à partir, non plus de ses principales thèses, mais de sa nature même, de son objet premier : l'étonnement. L'étonnement est cette capacité qu'il y a à s'interroger sur une évidence aveuglante, c'est-à-dire qui nous empêche de voir et de comprendre le monde le plus immédiat. La première des évidences est qu'il y a de l'être, qu'il existe matière et monde. De cette question apparemment toute (...) simple est née voilà des siècles en Grèce un type de réflexion qui depuis lors n'a cessé de relancer la pensée : la philosophie. L'histoire de cet étonnement, toujours repris, sans cesse à vif, continûment reformulé, Jeanne Hersch nous la raconte à partir de quelques philosophes occidentaux : les présocratiques, Socrate, Platon, Aristote, les épicuriens, les stoïciens, saint Augustin, Thomas d'Aquin, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Comte, Marx, Freud, Bergson, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Jaspers. Aussi cette histoire de la philosophie nous dit-elle, en réalité, comment la philosophie fut en tout temps, actuelle. (shrink)

A language of care and relationship-building has recently appeared with prominence in the business literature, driven by the realities of the marketplace. Thus, it seems a propitious time to reflect on a decade of writing in feminist morality that has focussed on the concept of an ethic of care, and examine its relevance for today's business context. Is the idea of creating organizations that “care” just another management fad that subverts the essential integrity of concepts of ethical caring? Conversely, are (...) these concepts capable of beginning an important dialogue that may help us to see new possibilities for simultaneously enhancingboththe effectiveness and the moral quality of organizations in the future? (shrink)

Cet article part de la supposition que la reprise de la thématique de la mémoire et de l’oubli, dans La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, part d’une recherche de la “juste mémoire” dans un paysage politique français qui souffre de “boulimie commémorative,” comme le dénonce Pierre Nora dans Les lieux de mémoire. Est exposée la confrontation entre une conception de la mémoire empreinte d’émotions subjectives, en opposition à la rigueur scientifique de l’histoire, et une conception de la mémoire vive comme condition transcendantale (...) de notre relation au passé. Cette confrontation débouche sur l’insistance de l’aspect éthique de la politique mémorielle et des pratiques collectives d’oubli et d’amnésie. Selon Ricœur, les hypothèses de Freud sur l’élaboration du trauma et sur le travail de deuil peuvent servir de paradigme privilégié à cette entreprise qui vise une narration historique juste. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing and painful anomalies of the modern world—so diffused that it has almost become a universal culture— is the incredible number of individuals and groups who kill, torture, burn, kidnap, imprison or merely outrage other people with a clear conscience when a political motive may be alleged. Added to them is the much larger number of people and institutions that tolerate, approve, encourage, praise and even bless that type of behavior when it occurs within a political (...) context. Included in this generic political violence is „the kind of behavior that is much more serious and that we may call terrorist, the behavior of those who seek to impose their will through the commission of atrocities that sow a generalized terror or a panic fear, and then to manipulate the reactions these atrocities provoke. Here “private” terrorists, as well as “semi-state” and “state” terrorists commit acts that would not be tolerated in normal, non-political life, and the public that approves this conduct would never accept it if it occurred in everyday life. (shrink)

Often, regret implies the wish not to have performed certain actions. In this article I claim that this wish can to some extent be fulfilled: it is possible, in a sense, to influence the character of actions that have already been performed. This possibility arises from combining a first person perspective with an outlook on actions as expressions of tendencies, where tendencies are identified on the basis of a number of actions. The idea is specified within the framework of Carnapian (...) reduction sentences, but this technique is in no sense mandatory: it can be formulated in other vocabularies as well. (shrink)

I begin with the common distinction between study which is for its own sake and study which is for some other reason. It is often assumed that when study is not for its own sake then it is for the sake of a career. But there are many and subtle ways in which a student's concern with his or her subject may be deflected from its intrinsic good. And there are ways of being concerned with its intrinsic good which are (...) quite trivial. Therefore, if we are concerned with what may go deep in a student's life—as surely we must be if we are concerned with its ethical or spiritual possibilities—then we cannot rest with the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic goods. A student with a vocation for healing who studies medicine in response to it, or a student who loves justice and who studies law in that spirit and with a view to practising it, is doing something finer than is a philosophy or history student who is merely enchanted with natural pleasures which come with the disciplined exercise of the powers of the mind. (shrink)

This book asks not only how the study of white-collar crime can enrich our understanding of crime and justice more generally, but also how criminological ...

This paper argues that the personal interview method is particularly appropriate for the kind of exploratory and complicated theory-building research that ethical decision-making, as a topic, represents at present. In doing so, it examines the key tasks of the ethics researcher, the suitability of interviews for obtaining the kind of data needed to accomplish these tasks, and the ensuing problems faced by the interview methodologist. It concludes with suggestions for enhancing the validity and reliability of interview-based ethics research.