Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Kerstin Thomas revaluates the famous dispute between Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, and Jacques Derrida, concerning a painting of shoes by Vincent Van Gogh. The starting point for this dispute was the description and analysis of things and artworks developed in his essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art”. In discussing Heidegger’s account, the art historian Meyer Schapiro’s main point of critique concerned Heidegger’s claim that the artwork reveals the truth of equipment in depicting shoes of a peasant woman (...) and thereby showing her world. Schapiro sees a striking paradox in Heidegger’s claim for truth, based on a specific object in a specific artwork while at the same time following a rather metaphysical idea of the artwork. Kerstin Thomas proposes an interpretation, which exceeds the common confrontation of philosophy versus art history by focussing on the respective notion of facticity at stake in the theoretical accounts of both thinkers. Schapiro accuses Heidegger of a lack of concreteness, which he sees as the basis for every truth claim on objects. Thomas understands Schapiro’s objections as motivated by this demand for a facticity, which not only includes the work of art, but also investigator in his concrete historical perspective. Truth claims under such conditions of facticity are always relative to historical knowledge, and open to critical intervention and therefore necessarily contingent. Following Thomas, Schapiro’s critique shows that despite his intention of giving the work of art back its autonomy, Heidegger could be accused of achieving quite the opposite: through the abstraction of the concrete, the factual, and the given to the type, he actually sets the self and the realm of knowledge of the creator as absolute and not the object of his knowledge. Instead, she argues for a revaluation of Schapiro’s position with recognition of the arbitrariness of the artwork, by introducing the notion of factuality as formulated by Quentin Meillassoux. Understood as exchange between artist and object in its concrete material quality as well as with the beholder, the truth of painting could only be shown as radically contingent. Thomas argues that the critical intervention of Derrida who discusses both positions anew is exactly motivated by a recognition of the contingent character of object, artwork and interpretation. His deconstructive analysis can be understood as recognition of the dynamic character of things and hence this could be shown with Meillassoux to be exactly its character of facticity – or factuality. (shrink)

Jeremy Waldron introduced the notion of rights supersession into the philosophical discussion about restitutive justice in cases of historic injustices. He refers to land claims by indigenous peoples as a real-world example and as an application of his theory of rights supersession. He implies that the changes that have taken place in settler states since the first years of colonialism are the kind of changes that lead to a supersession of land rights. The article proposes to unbundle property rights into (...) rights of benefit, control, use, and access and to distinguish between different forms of attachment. This strategy allows for a third option of restitution and supersession, namely partial restitution. Partial restitution grants current land holders those rights that they need to satisfy their attachments and basic distributive justice claims. At the same time, rights that are not needed for either purpose will revert back to indigenous peoples as the original owners. The article argues that the notion of partial restitution allows for far more extensive land rights than a less nuanced application of the supersession thesis. (shrink)

Using a unique dataset provided by the international rating agency GES®, we investigate the effects of corporate sustainability and industry-related exposure to environmental and social risks on the market value of MSCI World firms. The results show a negative relationship in the earlier years of our sample period. However, the analysis reveals that the capital market perception of sustainability has changed owing to the financial crisis. Looking at the height of the crisis in September 2008, the month in which Lehman (...) Brothers shocked the world’s capital markets by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, we find that the previously negative perception of corporate sustainability across its various dimensions was positively affected and offset. In addition, as a moderated regression analysis shows, the crisis led to a positive perception of corporate sustainability in industries that are exposed to higher environmental and social risks. Our study has the practical implication that executives, in particular in industries with high environmental and social risks, should increase their commitment to corporate sustainability due to the changes in the institutional setting triggered by the financial crisis. (shrink)

Advance care planning (ACP) is promoted as beneficial practice internationally. This article critically examines different ways of understanding and measuring success in ACP. It has been 50 years since Luis Kutner first published his original idea of the Living Will, which was thought to be a contract between health carers and patients to provide for instructions about treatment choices in cases of mental incapacity. Its purpose was to extend a patient's right to autonomy and protect health carers from charges of (...) wrong-doing. Yet, it can be doubtful whether different types of ACP achieve these goals rather than aiming at secondary gains. My discussion suggests that the current promotion of ACP is not always engaging critically with the original ACP intentions and may even pursue notions of success that may run contrary to respecting autonomy. The risk of this may especially be the case when high participation rates are taken as indicators of success for institutional ACP programs. I further suggest that Kutner's two original aims of protecting patient autonomy and preventing charges of wrong-doing are near impossible to achieve in conjunction, because their simultaneous pursuit fails to acknowledge that patients and carers have opposing needs for reassurance about possible judgment errors. I conclude that the most realistic idea of success of modern ACP is an acknowledgement of the importance of ongoing dialogue about what constitutes appropriate care and a diversity of aims rather than any kind of advance, contractual insurance in the face of controversy. (shrink)

More so than in the past, the US is now embracing the logic of preventive force: using military force to counter potential threats around the globe before they have fully materialized. While popular with individuals who seek to avoid too many “boots on the ground,” preventive force is controversial because of its potential for unnecessary collateral damage. Who decides what threats are ‘imminent’? Is there an international legal basis to kill or harm individuals who have a connection to that threat? (...) Do the benefits of preventive force justify the costs? And, perhaps most importantly, is the US setting a dangerous international precedent? In Preventive Force, editors Kerstin Fisk and Jennifer Ramos bring together legal scholars, political scientists, international relations scholars, and prominent defense specialists to examine these questions, whether in the context of full-scale preventive war or preventive drone strikes. In particular, the volume highlights preventive drones strikes, as they mark a complete transformation of how the US understands international norms regarding the use of force, and could potentially lead to a ‘slippery slope’ for the US and other nations in terms of engaging in preventive warfare as a matter of course. A comprehensive resource that speaks to the contours of preventive force as a security strategy as well as to the practical, legal, and ethical considerations of its implementation, Preventive Force is a useful guide for political scientists, international relations scholars, and policymakers who seek a thorough and current overview of this essential topic. (shrink)

This essay focuses on Günther Anders’s engagement with (political) poetry. I draw on published material and unpublished source texts from the Anders Nachlass to track how Anders arrives at his own writing style and mode of address through his sustained engagement with poetry. Anders’s philosophical prose and exoteric use of language is shaped by multifaceted reflections on (political) poetry and by the tension between ‘political poetry’ and ‘lyrical action’. I first elaborate on Anders's reading of Brecht in the early 1930s, (...) and then turn to the poetry and reflections on poetics that were written during his long exile in the US (1936–50). It is from this basis that I consider Anders’s categorical and programmatic turn away from poetry from the mid-1940s onwards. What emerges from my discussion is that engagements with literature, and with poetry in particular, were not a marginal activity for Anders but reflect a broad, life-long interest in (predominantly) classical and contemporary poetry, resulting in reflections on poetics and his own extensive poetic praxis. (shrink)

We're in an era of ever increasing attention to animal rights, and activism around the issue is growing more widespread and prominent. In this volume, Kerstin Jacobsson and Jonas Lindblom use the animal rights movement in Sweden to offer the first analysis of social movements through the lens of Emile Durkheim's sociology of morality. By positing social movements as essentially a moral phenomenon--and morality itself as a social fact--the book complements more structural, cultural, or strategic action-based approaches, even as (...) it also demonstrates the continuing value of classical sociological approaches to understanding contemporary society. (shrink)

Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) have become a widely used tool to reconcile societies in the aftermath of widespread injustice or social and political conflict in a state. This article focuses on TRCs that take place in non-transitional societies in which the political and social structures, institutions, and power relations have largely remained in place since the time of injustice. Furthermore, it will focus on one particular injustice that TRCs try to address through the practice of truth-telling, namely the eradication (...) of epistemic injustice. The article takes the Canadian and Norwegian TRCs as two examples to show that under conditions of enduring injustice, willful ignorance of the majority, and power inequality, TRCs might create a double bind for victims which makes them choose between epistemic exploitation and continued injustices based on the majority's ignorance. The article argues that the set-up and accompanying measures of TRCs are of the utmost importance if TRCs in non-transitional societies are to overcome epistemic injustice, instead of creating new relations of exploitation. (shrink)

The article proposes that climate change makes enduring colonial injustices and structures visible. It focuses on the imposition and dominance of colonial concepts of land and self-determination on Indigenous peoples in settler states. It argues that if the dominance of these colonial frameworks remains unaddressed, the progressing climate change will worsen other colonial injustices, too. Specifically, Indigenous self-determination capabilities will be increasingly undermined, and Indigenous peoples will experience the loss of what they understand as relevant land from within their own (...) ontologies of land. The article holds that even if settler states strive to repair colonial injustices, these efforts will be unsuccessful if climate change occurs and decolonization is pursued within the framework of a settler colonial ontology of land. Therefore, the article suggests, decolonization of the ontologies of land and concepts of self-determination is a precondition for a just response to climate change. (shrink)

With the foundation of the journal,,Evrejskaja Starina" in 1909, the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society of St. Petersburg wanted to create a forum for the study of the history of Jews in Russia and Poland. This article investigates whether the journal was able to live up to its goal, and to which extent,,Evrejskaja Starina" served as a basis for the further development of a Russian-Jewish historiography.

Migration is a key driver of economic and societal transformation, touching people’s lives worldwide. Understanding why people decide to migrate is crucial for fostering inclusive and diverse societies and informing effective policy-making. This paper focuses on economic migrants, a particular group of migrants whose study has primarily been confined to narrow areas of interest and characterized by inconsistent terminology, limiting cross-study comparability and the synthesis of findings. Viewed through the interdisciplinary lens and derived from theoretical, empirical, and analytical research outcomes, (...) the present paper concludes that economic migrants’ movements are influenced by the socio-demographic factors of ‘age’ and ‘education’ and are motivated by both the economic motives of ‘expected income’ and ‘employment’ and the economic-related motives of ‘corruption’, ‘amenities’, and ‘happiness’. These motives also reveal a typical profile of economic migrants: working-age, highly educated, predominantly male individuals who seek opportunities in developed countries to achieve a fulfilling life. The presented findings contribute to a better understanding of the dynamic decision-making process of economic migrants and offer valuable insights for policymakers to design more nuanced and targeted strategies for integrating migrants into societies. (shrink)

The contribution is based on a sketch of the conceptual history of travel and its technical and infrastructural framework. It then argues that not before the mass media of the nineteenth century, especially newspapers and popular journals, is traveling is displayed as a cause and effect of globalization. Two consequences of global travelling popularized by mass media are analyzed: the ubiquity of comparison, which integrates the experience of otherness generated by travels into narratives of progress and primitive backwardness; the enormous (...) importance of the phenomenon of lost and missing persons. It appears in literary, scientific and media history, and as a legal problem. It refers to the disturbances and interruptions of world traffic and thus paradoxically demonstrates the increasingly dense and close network of globalization. (shrink)

Der "im Januar 1945" datierte Text darf nur dann als Vorwort der 1953 publizierten Fassung der "Philosophischen Untersuchungen" betrachtet werden, wenn nachzuweisen ist, daß Wittgenstein selbst diesen Text zum Vorwort der gedruckten Version bestimmt hat. Nimmt man dies versuchsweise an, so sollen die Philosophischen Untersuchungen dem Leser einen Gesamteindruck eines "Gedankengebiets" vermitteln, in dem die "Ergebnisse" verschiedener "Untersuchungen" versammelt sind. Die nach Gegenständen geordnete Zusammenfassung dieser Ergebnisse ist schwierig, weil die Gegenstände jeweils in verschiedenen Untersuchungen behandelt werden, und gleicht deshalb (...) einer Reise "kreuz und quer". Da jedoch nicht die Zusammenfassung, sondern das Konglomerat der Untersuchungsergebnisse dokumentiert werden soll, muß der Leser wie aus einem "Album" einen Gesamteindruck des "Gedankengebiets" erschließen und darf sich nicht auf die isolierte Betrachtung einzelner Textelemente beschränken. (shrink)

(2012). Practising Social Work Ethics Around the World: Cases and Commentaries. Ethics and Social Welfare: Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 418-419. doi: 10.1080/17496535.2012.735818.

Our ability to select relevant information from the environment is limited by the resolution of attention – i.e., the minimum size of the region that can be selected. Neural mechanisms that underlie this limit and its development are not yet understood. Functional MRI was performed during an object tracking task in 7- and 11-year-old children, and in young adults. Object tracking activated canonical fronto-parietal attention systems and motion-sensitive area MT in children as young as 7 years. Object tracking performance improved (...) with age, together with stronger recruitment of parietal attention areas and a shift from low-level to higher-level visual areas. Increasing the required resolution of spatial attention – which was implemented by varying the distance between target and distractors in the object tracking task – led to activation increases in fronto-insular cortex, medial frontal cortex including anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and supplementary motor area, superior colliculi, and thalamus. This core circuitry for attentional precision was recruited by all age groups, but ACC showed an age-related activation reduction. Our results suggest that age-related improvements in selective visual attention and in the resolution of attention are characterized by an increased use of more functionally specialized brain regions during the course of development. (shrink)

Within Western European countries the number of women and girls already genitally mutilated or at risk, is rising due to increasing rates of migration of Africans. The article compares legislative and ethical practices within the medical profession concerning female genital mutilation (FGM) in these countries. There are considerable differences in the number of affected women and in legislation and guidelines. For example, in France, Great Britain and Austria FGM is included in the criminal code as elements of crime, whereas in (...) Germany and Switzerland FGM is brought to trial as bodily injury. So far trials only in France and Switzerland in connection with FGM resulted in convictions. France and Great Britain as former Colonial countries serve as an example of countries with a comparably great number of African immigrants. These countries have the best possibilities to intervene preventatively, due to legislation and detailed medical guidelines. For instance, an obligation exists in France to inform administrative and medical authorities if FGM is suspected. FGM so far is not explicitly part of the curriculum for medical training in any of the examined countries. (shrink)

It has been proposed that the design of robots might benefit from interactions that are similar to caregiver–child interactions, which is tailored to children’s respective capacities to a high degree. However, so far little is known about how people adapt their tutoring behaviour to robots and whether robots can evoke input that is similar to child-directed interaction. The paper presents detailed analyses of speakers’ linguistic behaviour and non-linguistic behaviour, such as action demonstration, in two comparable situations: In one experiment, parents (...) described and explained to their nonverbal infants the use of certain everyday objects; in the other experiment, participants tutored a simulated robot on the same objects. The results, which show considerable differences between the two situations on almost all measures, are discussed in the light of the computer-as-social-actor paradigm and the register hypothesis. Keywords: child-directed speech ; motherese; robotese; motionese; register theory; social communication; human–robot interaction ; computers-as-social-actors; mindless transfer. (shrink)

In this article, I address the question whether or not robots should be social actors and suggest that we do not have much choice but to construe collaborative robots as social actors. Social cues, including emotional displays, serve coordination functions in human interaction and therefore have to be used, even by robots, in order for long-term collaboration to succeed. While robots lack the experiential basis of emotional display, also in human interaction much emotional expression is part of conventional social practice; (...) if robots are to participate in such social practices, they need to produce such signals as well. I conclude that if we aim to share our social spaces with robots, they better be social actors, which may even include the display of emotions. This finding is of empirical as well as philosophical relevance because it shifts the ethical discussion away from the question, how social collaborative robots should be, to the question, what kinds of human-robot collaborations we want. (shrink)

In 2018, the Danish Supreme Court revoked Adam Johansen’s citizenship in conjunction with his conviction for terrorism. Applying a proportionality test adapted from European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence for naturalised, not natural, citizens, the Danish court determined that Johansen’s Muslim faith tied him to Tunisia, his father’s country, rather than to Denmark. In March 2022, the ECtHR unanimously upheld this judgment. In so doing, the ECtHR solidified an emerging standard in cases of citizenship revocation for natural citizens, which (...) standard is weaker than the protections enjoyed by naturalised citizens. This article reviews the Danish and ECtHR jurisprudence to show how the explosive expansion of citizenship revocation in relation to terror crimes, combined with the ECtHR’s emerging jurisprudence rejecting substantive review for such revocation, demonstrates a significant, multidirectional weakening of rights protections in Europe. (shrink)