Literature reviews have repeatedly emphasized the need to further investigate relationships between corporate social responsibility and micro-organizational variables. The present research attempts to address this call by examining the direct and indirect relationship between individual perceptions of CSR and employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors. Multiphasic data from 207 workplace supervisor–subordinate dyads recruited from an online panel were analyzed to show that organizational identification mediated the relationship between CSR and OCBs. Furthermore, supervisor transformational leadership style moderated the mediation, such that the indirect (...) effect of the organizational identification on the relationship between CSR and OCBs became nonsignificant under low transformational leadership. Based on these results, we make suggestions for using embeddedness programs to improve perceptions of CSR. (shrink)

Kevin M. Cahill reclaims one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's most passionately pursued endeavors: to reawaken a sense of wonder around human life and language and its mysterious place in the world. Following the philosopher's spiritual and cultural criticism and tying it more tightly to the overall evolution of his thought, Cahill frames an original interpretation of Wittgenstein's engagement with Western metaphysics and modernity, better contextualizing the force of his work. Cahill synthesizes several approaches to Wittgenstein's life and thought. He stresses (...) the nontheoretical aspirations of the philosopher's early and later writings, combining key elements from the so-called resolute readings of the _Tractatus_ with the "therapeutic" readings of _Philosophical Investigations_. Cahill shows how continuity in Wittgenstein's cultural and spiritual concerns informed if not guided his work between these texts, and in his reading of the _Tractatus_, Cahill identifies surprising affinities with Martin Heidegger's _Being and Time_--a text rarely associated with Wittgenstein's early formulations. In his effort to recapture wonder, Wittgenstein both avoided and undermined traditional philosophy's reliance on theory. As Cahill relates the steps of this bold endeavor, he forms his own innovative, analytical methods, joining historicist and contextualist approaches to text-based, immanent readings. The result is an original, sustained examination of Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

Each of the following papers gives an account of a different UK clinical ethics committee. The committees vary in the length of time they have been established, and also in the main focus of their work. The accounts discuss the development of the committees and some of the ethical problems that have been brought to them. The issues raised will be relevant for other National Health Service (NHS) trusts in the UK that wish to set up such a committee.

In this book, Kevin M. Cherry compares the views of Aristotle and Plato about the practice, study, and above all, the purpose of politics.

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The article shows how in Outline of a Theory of Practice Pierre Bourdieu relies on a kind of philosophical myth in his attempt to dispel structuralist accounts of action. Section 2 is a summary of Bourdieu’s use of the concept of habitus against intellectualism and structuralism. Schatzki’s criticism of Bourdieu from a purportedly Wittgensteinian perspective is also examined. Section 3 relates Bourdieu’s use of habitus to a debate between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell about the role of concepts in action. (...) Section 4 shows how McDowell’s rejection of foundationalist elements in Dreyfus’s account of action also raises problems for Bourdieu’s account of action. Diamond’s recent criticism of Winch is shown to have an interesting connection to this debate. (shrink)

This review essay considers three prominent recent works in the philosophy of race: Mills's The Racial Contract, Outlaw's On Race and Philosophy, and McGary's Race and Social Justice. Each of these books has played an important role in convincing social and political philosophers to take race more seriously as a category for theoretical analysis rather than simply as a subject related to certain applied moral and political problems such as affirmative action. Each of these works also wrestles with the question (...) of whether the dominant theoretical traditions in modern Western political philosophy, and particularly liberalism, are capable of addressing the wide range of forms of social injustice that are linked to racism. The author indicates a number of differences between the books' approaches and argues that the conclusions at which they arrive are subject to different shortcomings. The author also shows that all three books raise sharp challenges to the liberal tradition at the same time that they remain ambivalent about the risks of departing altogether from that tradition. Key Words: justice • liberalism • modernity • race. (shrink)

This paper will open with a focus on alienated and unfree activity as it is presented by Marx in his famous Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. My concern will be to bring out the most central dimensions of his view of such activity including: the alienated relation in such activity to other people, to one’s own activity, to the products of one’s activity, to the natural world, etc. Moreover, I will be especially concerned to bring out the mode of (...) reason that is embedded within alienated activity, as well as the kind of relation between cognition, conation, sensory experience, feeling, (etc.) that Marx projects as obtaining in such activity. Following this I will make a dialectical extrapolation from the analysis of alienated activity that Marx gives us, and go on to present a sketch of a humanistic-Marxist interpretation of unalienated and free activity. This will be seen to involve not only a very different structural relation to other people, to one’s own activity, and to the natural world than the one that obtains in alienated activity—but also a very different structural relation between cognition, conation, sensoryexperience, feeling, (etc.). Then I will give a sketch of a praxis-oriented interpretation of historical materialism, which will serve to bring out the historicity of reason, and the historicity of the modes of rationality that prevail at various stages in world history. The last section of this paper will argue: (1) that a transformation of reason is a real possibility; (2) that a transformation of reason in the direction of the kind of unalienated and free activity I have delineated earlier offers the best hope for a human future and a sustainable relation to the natural world; and also (3) that at this juncture in human history it has now become a practical necessity, if humankind is to lift itself out of the mounting world crisis—spiritual and otherwise—in which we are all enmeshed. (shrink)

This is a working paper that presents the first phase of what will eventually be a huge project, namely a critical appropriation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Early on it provides a sketch of the main strands of Aristotle’s theoretical web in his N. Ethics. Following that, the paper offers some critical commentary concerning some of Aristotle’s main positions: especially his views on moral virtue, the soul, intellectual virtue, and human well-being. The paper then turns to the development of some significantly (...) different ways of construing both intellectual virtue as well as moral virtue. With respect to intellectual virtue, I present my own perspective in interconnection with a process-oriented way of understanding reality, as opposed to Aristotle’s substance-oriented way. With respect to moral virtue, I present my interpretation in relation to a thisworldly understanding of the human spirit/soul, as well as a humanistic-Marxist interpretation of human well-being. Toward the paper’s end, I offer some suggestions concerning a modified “doctrine of the mean” that would be a sort of critical synthesis of the views of Aristotle and Confucius. (shrink)

This meditation is a series of reflections about some milestones along my philosophical journey that concern universals, universal definitions, claims to universal moral principles, and universal dialogue. It begins with a focus on the Socratic search for universal definitions of general terms; and it continues with a look at the way my discovery of non-Euclidean geometries began to challenge my attitude toward the possibility of universal definitions of all general terms. Along the way I bring out how Wittgenstein’s notion of (...) “family resemblances” added to this challenge. The meditation continues with reflections on Kant’s attempts to make a case for a universal and unconditional moral imperative. Following this I sketch a counter-case that the concrete human being gets lost in a haze of Kantian abstraction. These reflections bring out the clear conceptual linkage between the “abstract universal” and the “external relation” as canons ofinterpretation.The meditation then makes a shift to some later milestones on my journey, beginning with reflection on the “concrete universal” and the “internal relation” as alternative canons of interpretation. I try to illustrate how Marx critically appropriated Hegel’s view of these canons via discussion of Marx’s notion of “praxis;” and then go on to adopt these canons of interpretation throughout the rest of the meditation. Employing these canons of interpretation, and with Aristotle’s very broad understanding of the term “politics” in mind, I construe universal dialogue to be a mode of discourse oriented toward the development of a new “politics of the global village” that could cultivate the practice of concretely relating to the other person as a person. Inasmuch as Aristotle construed “politics” as involving a developed ethics as well as a “science of society” , the meditation proceeds with a preliminary sketch of these two dimensions of a new “politics of the global village.”My meditation goes on to suggest a fundamental ethical principle that could be concretely and universally adopted by all people, and that could guide universal dialogue. The meditation continues with a sketch of a philosophical reconstruction of a humanistic Marxist “science of society,” and integrates the fundamental ethical principle with it. This sketch is basically a philosophical clarification of Marx’s theory of cultural evolution that brings into play the key role of the concrete universal and the internal relation as fundamental canons of interpretation. The meditation concludes with an argument that universal dialogue on the part of a very wide spectrum of ordinary people, as well as specialists, is the sine qua non for any hope of transforming the secular basis of human societies in the direction of social justice, as all of humanity faces the daunting crises that loom throughout planet Earth. (shrink)

Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar pushed back in various ways against the tide of historical criticism in the twentieth century. On the one hand Rahner wished to distance theology from biblical revelation in his turn towards the subject. In so doing, he sought to preserve theology from the rising tide of skepticism resulting from contemporary exegesis. His philosophical system left little room for historical revelation because of a fixation on individual revelation. Balthasar, on the other hand, questioned whether (...) the Rahnerian system strips Christianity of the need to bear witness to the world, and relativizes Christ’s Incarnation. Balthasar saw the indestructible unity of the form (gestalt) presented to humanity in the revelation of Old and New Testaments as an antidote to the fragmentation within biblical studies. Because of gestalt, Scripture is more than a mere sum of its parts. For Balthasar, the faith of the exegete is an irreplaceable requisite for accurate hermeneutics. Dispensing with the revelatory character of the Scriptures would also be unscientific; it is an unsuitable approach to a text that calls one to bear witness. Balthasar thus correctly called for a theological hermeneutic whereby the faithful exegete recognizes the unity of the scriptural account. (shrink)

Some labor historians and social historians of race are tempted to try to explain Chinese American racial oppression in the US purely by appeal to economic factors, especially the role that Chinese American men played in the US labor market. In this essay, I argue that such reduction is not possible. I briefly describe the history of Chinese immigration to the US, focusing on key changes in US law governing immigration and citizenship as they affected the Chinese. I then refute (...) two economic reductionist views of Chinese American racial oppression. I conclude by suggesting a third, alternative understanding of this oppression that appeals to economic factors among others. (shrink)

Gossip is a subject that has been studied by researchers from an array of disciplines with various foci and methods. We measured the content of language use by members of a competitive sports team across 18 months, integrating qualitative ethnographic methods with quantitative sampling and analysis. We hypothesized that the use of gossip will vary significantly depending on whether it is used for self-serving or group-serving purposes. Our results support a model of gossip derived from multilevel selection theory that expects (...) gossip to serve group-beneficial rules when rewards are partitioned at the group level on a scale that permits mutual monitoring. We integrate our case study with earlier studies of gossip conducted by anthropologists, psychologists, and management researchers. (shrink)

This paper explores Marx’s mature method of dialectical explanation. Drawing from Marx’s formulations, the paper proceeds to philosophically elaborate what this method involves. It discloses that: a) all explanatory factors come from prior empirical inquiry; b) this method moves in stages from more ..

If political dialogue is to identify and redress existing forms of injustice, participants in the dialogue must be able to appeal to the concept of objectivity in order to exchange claims, attitudes, and background beliefs which distort or conceal various forms of injustice. The conceptions of objectivity traditionally employed in liberal democratic political philosophy are not well-suited to play this role because they are insufficiently sensitive to the social and ideological pluralism of modern societies. Some liberal political philosophers have recently (...) offered more context-sensitive and pluralistic conceptions of objectivity, requiring participants in political dialogue to frame their demands for justice in terms of a conception of justice acceptable to all participants in the dialogue. I argue that this conception of objectivity constitutes an improvement over traditional liberal conceptions. However, it is ultimately unacceptable because it does not take adequate account of the limited and distorted knowledge that members of dominant social groups tend to possess about the oppression experienced by members of subordinate and marginalized groups. As a result, this conception of objectivity wrongly deems the demands for justice voiced by members of subordinate and marginalized groups to be subjective simply because they seem unreasonable from the limited and distorting standpoint of dominant social groups. (shrink)

Accounting educators are in the midst of creating new opportunities for students to enhance their abilities to recognize ethical dilemmas, establish criteria by which to make ethical decisions, and establish support mechanisms and strategies to facilitate their ethical decision-making. CPA firms, professional organizations and state boards of accountancy are co-operating to increase requirements for ethics education for candidates taking the CPA exam. The current situation is confusing and sub-optimal regarding the use of precious learning time in college programs. A new (...) dialogue between the three stakeholders, creative learning approaches, and additional resources can lead to a more consistent and optimal learning paradigm regarding the ethics education of accountants. Research evaluating the effectiveness of various approaches is needed to effectively apply limited resources in an area critical to the reputation capital of the accounting profession. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 35-37.

This paper is aimed at a rethinking of the spiritual in relation to Marx. Drawing from Marx’s own formulations, it makes clear that Marx made an important distinction between religion and the spiritual, and that he did indeed speak of the spiritual in positive ways. Much of the discussion centers on Marx’s famous passage speaking about religion as “the opium of the people.” Therein Marx writes that: “Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not so that man will (...) wear the chain that is without fantasy or consolation but so that he will throw it off and pluck the living flower.” This paper attempts to make clear whatMarx means by the “imaginary flowers” and also by the “living flower”; and in so doing helps to clarify what Marx means by “the spiritual”. (shrink)

Mr. A's physician recommends immediate dialysis. However, Mr. A is in the United States illegally, has no family living in the area, and is unemployed. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires the hospital not only to examine Mr. A, but to provide him with any needed stabilizing treatment without considering his lack of insurance coverage or ability to pay. The needed treatment to stabilize Mr. A is dialysis. Therefore, the physician admits him and starts dialysis. But Mr. A (...) will need to continue dialysis indefinitely. Because he has no insurance and is an illegal immigrant, he is not eligible for any outpatient dialysis units. He is also unable to afford any medical treatments. Once Mr. A is stabilized, should he be discharged? His physician and social worker turn to the hospital ethics committee for help. What should Mercy Hospital do? (shrink)

This book explores the question of what it means to be a human being through sustained and original analyses of three important philosophical topics: relativism, skepticism, and naturalism in the social sciences. Kevin Cahill's approach involves an original employment of historical and ethnographic material that is both conceptual and empirical in order to address relevant philosophical issues. Specifically, while Cahill avoids interpretative debates, he develops an approach to philosophical critique based on Cora Diamond's and James Conant's work on the (...) early Wittgenstein. This makes possible the use of a concept of culture that avoids the dogmatism that not only typifies traditional metaphysics but also frequently mars arguments from ordinary language or phenomenology. This is especially crucial for the third part of the book, which involves a cultural-historical critique of the ontology of the self in Stanley Cavell's work on skepticism. In pursuing this strategy, the book also mounts a novel and timely defense of the interpretivist tradition in the philosophy of the social sciences. Towards a Philosophical Anthropology of Culture will be of interest to researchers working on the philosophy of the social sciences, Wittgenstein, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

By coincidence, it seems, the critical vocabulary and concerns that came to be known as postcolonial theory and methodology rose to be a dominant school of inquiry in the Anglo-American academy in the same years that the Soviet Union collapsed (notwithstanding that key theoretical texts by Frantz Fanon and others predated this moment by decades). Yet, oddly, postcolonialist terms were seldom applied to postsocialist and post-Soviet cases until the 2000s, and they have become more broadly utilized in these territories only (...) in the past decade. Further, it must be admitted that few results of these applications of postcolonial tools to postsocialist cases have made much of a mark among broader circles of postcolonial scholars and thinkers. Djagalov's book may help to correct this situation. Rather than work in the mode of “application”—applying a postcolonial framework to yet one more case—Djagalov reconstructs the history of a century of socialist anti-imperialism, as it was expressed in global cultural institutions and networks, and in so doing discovers the ignored or forgotten genealogy that links contemporary postcolonial thought to writers, activists, and theoreticians of the socialist world.Djagalov's book toggles between, on the one hand, chapters of institutional history that chronicle the global cultural institutions (such as the Afro-Asian Writers Association, the Tashkent Film Festival, and the Lotus Prize) that connected the Soviet Union with decolonizing countries and, on the other hand, chapters of synthetic cultural criticism that articulate typological analyses of common narrative forms that circulated in the fiction and film of the socialist world—recurring varieties of “solidarity narratives,” as Djagalov calls them. His work reveals how central the state-socialist political imaginary was for writers and filmmakers ranging from Nâzım Hikmet to Ngūgī wa Thiong'o, and how prominent their itineraries through Soviet institutions and networks were in their biographies. Ngūgī, for instance, finished his 1977 novel Petals of Blood during a residency in the Soviet Writers House in Yalta.In recovering the lost continent of anti-imperial socialist globality that bridged the “second” and “third worlds,” Djagalov has demonstrated not how postcolonial terms can be applied to postsocialist cases but how postcolonial theory and method are themselves postsocialist phenomena. Djagalov does not attempt to rectify the state-socialist prehistory of postcolonial thought with a critique of Soviet imperial habits or of the postcolonial contexts of contemporary Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. At least, though, the challenges of thinking “postcolonial” and “postsocialist” together have now become clearer. From Internationalism to Postcolonialism leaves us with new research problems: what, for example, does it mean to be a postcolony of an anti-imperial empire? (shrink)

Latvia presents a unique and counterintuitive case in the history of postsocialist ethnic relations. Despite the USSR's having annexed Latvia by fiat and armed force in the 1940s—and despite the population transfers of so many Russians and other Soviet peoples to the region that Latvians themselves nearly became an ethnic minority in “their own” republic—there has been no ethnic violence between Latvians and Russians in the postsocialist era. Yet the events of summer 2014 have radically shifted the political imaginary of (...) this region, raising the specter of a loss of social cohesion and an eruption of violence. The essay examines one of the factors that has supported amity in Latvia for the past two decades: late-Soviet cosmopolitanism and its legacies in present-day Latvian cultural life. Analysis focuses on public art projects in Riga during the summer of 2014, in the shadow of the war in Ukraine. (shrink)

In his paper, “Was He Trying to Whistle It,” P. M. S. Hacker argues that the weight of what he terms the “internal” and “external” evidence shows that the kind of interpretation of the Tractatus put forth by Cora Diamond is wrong. The internal evidence is the Tractatus itself, while the external evidence consists of some of Wittgenstein’s other philosophical writings, letters, and records of his discussions about the book. This paper critically examines the way Hacker uses some ofthe external (...) evidence in building his case against Diamond and those sympathetic to her approach to the Tractatus. The main goal is not so much to defend the views that Hacker wants to attack, but to argue that given the nature of those views, the manner in which he attempts to use certain pieces of evidence against them is seriously misguided. (shrink)

The creation of new technologies that serve humanity holds the potential to help end global poverty. Unfortunately, relatively little is done in engineering education to support engineers’ humanitarian efforts. Here, various strategies are introduced to augment the teaching of engineering ethics with the goal of encouraging engineers to serve as effective volunteers for community service. First, codes of ethics, moral frameworks, and comparative analysis of professional service standards lay the foundation for expectations for voluntary service in the engineering profession. Second, (...) standard coverage of global issues in engineering ethics educates humanitarian engineers about aspects of the community that influence technical design constraints encountered in practice. Sample assignments on volunteerism are provided, including a prototypical design problem that integrates community constraints into a technical design problem in a novel way. Third, it is shown how extracurricular engineering organizations can provide a theory-practice approach to education in volunteerism. Sample completed projects are described for both undergraduates and graduate students. The student organization approach is contrasted with the service-learning approach. Finally, long-term goals for establishing better infrastructure are identified for educating the humanitarian engineer in the university, and supporting life-long activities of humanitarian engineers. (shrink)

The early nineteenth century was a time between empires in German-speaking lands, following the collapse of the holy Roman empire in 1806. This was also the time at which modern concepts of nations, nationalism, and the state entered theological discourse, bound together with emerging notions of world historical progress. From this time until the First World War, the task of conceptualizing national identity and the nature of the ‘Christian state’ became a pressing theological problem. This essay seeks to locate Schleiermacher’s (...) reflections on the Christian state within this developing problematic. Schleiermacher’s philosophical and theological works closely engaged emerging ideas of the nation, state, and historical progress. However, he departed from the more totalizing affirmations of national spirit and the Christian state of many of his contemporaries, arguing for a more limited conception of the state as a point of transition in the ongoing historical development of the reign of God. (shrink)