Luck permeates our lives, and this raises a number of pressing questions: What is luck? When we attribute luck to people, circumstances, or events, what are we attributing? Do we have any obligations to mitigate the harms done to people who are less fortunate? And to what extent is deserving praise or blame a ected by good or bad luck? Although acquiring a true belief by an uneducated guess involves a kind of luck that precludes knowledge, does all luck undermine (...) knowledge? And how accurate are our luck attributions anyway? The academic literature has seen growing, interdisciplinary interest in luck, and this volume brings together and explains the most important areas of this research. It consists of 39 newly commissioned chapters, written by an internationally acclaimed team of philosophers and psychologists, for a readership of students and researchers. Its coverage is divided into six sections: (i) The History of Luck, (ii) The Nature of Luck, (iii) Moral Luck, (iv) Epistemic Luck, (v) The Psychology of Luck, and (vi) Future Research. The chapters in these sections cover a wide range of topics, from the problem of moral luck, to anti-luck epistemology, to the relationship between luck attributions and cognitive biases, to meta-questions regarding the nature of luck itself, to a range of other theoretical and empirical questions currently being investigated by ethicists, epistemologists, and psychologists. By bringing this research together, the Handbook serves as both a touchstone for understanding the relevant issues and a first port of call for future philosophical and psychological research on luck. (shrink)

Ecological restoration and native landscaping are increasing, particularly in the American Midwest, where they form part of the area's history and culture of conservation. But practitioners rarely pause to ask philosophical questions related to categories of native and invasive or human control and harmony with nature. This article brings philosophy into conversation with practice, using members of Wild Ones Native Landscaping, a non-profit headquartered in Neenah, WI, as a case study. Philosophers and ethicists who are studying Ecological Restoration and Native (...) Landscaping can learn valuable lessons – in practicality, aesthetics and flexibility – from practitioners such as the Wild Ones. (shrink)

It may be nearly impossible to use standard principles to make a decision about a complex ethical case. The best decision, say virtue ethicists in the Aristotelian tradition, is often one that is made by a person of good character who knows the salient facts of the case and can frame the situation appropriately. In this respect ethical decisions and strategic decisions are similar. Rationality plays a role in good ethical decision-making, but virtue ethicists emphasize the importance of intuitions and (...) emotions as well.Virtue ethics suggests a reconciliation of the factual and the normative. Virtues may explain as well as justify actions. The same is true of other psychological states and events. That psychological terms have normative implications does not render them useless in explanation. As Aristotle does not distinguish cleanly between the normative and empirical, so many moral philosophers today reject the is-ought dichotomy. They are prepared to learn from economists, psychologists, and other empirical scientists who offer information about the nature of the good life and of values. Social psychologists who study community or corporate culture suggest a close relationship between organizational and ethical features, much as Aristotle saw a close relationship between politics and ethics. We should infer from all this that in business ethics there is good reason for philosophers and organization scholars to work closely together. (shrink)

Climate engineering is subject to the “playing God” critique, which charges that humans should not undertake to control nature in ways that seem to overstep the proper scope of human agency. This argument is easily discredited, and in fact the opposite—that we should “play God”—may be equally valid in some circumstances. To revive the playing God critique, I argue that it functions not on a logical but on a symbolic and emotional level to highlight nostalgia for functional dualisms in the (...) face of the bewildering problem of climate change. It also raises significant questions about the virtue of those who might engineer the climate. These two concerns point to questions about the proper role of human agency. I use the scholarship of Aldo Leopold and H. Richard Niebuhr to argue for a model of human agency based on contextual awareness and responsive, communal responsibility. I conclude with some implications of this view for decision-makers engaging the topic of climate engineering. (shrink)

Abstract:We have reached a rough moral consensus in the field of business ethics. We believe in capitalism with a safety net and enough regulation to deal with serious market imperfections. We favor autonomy for individuals and democracy for governments, though not necessarily for organizations. We recognize the rights of citizens and the different rights of employees. We respect a variety of possible sets of values, and so countenance a distinction between public and private. In other words, we are capitalists, pluralists, (...) and liberals. But globalization will force us and businesspeople who share our views to deal with significant stakeholders who do not. The 21st century will see the accelerating pace of globalization. The great challenge for business ethics, for its philosophers and its scholars of business, will be to identify and advocate morality that takes adequate account of globalization, and that in so doing avoids untenable parochialism without falling into relativism. (shrink)

Consumption--the flow of physical materials in human lives--is an important ethical issue. Be it fair trade coffee or foreign oil, North Americans' consumption choices affect the well-being of humans around the globe, in addition to impacting the natural world and consumers themselves. In this book, Laura Hartman seeks to formulate a coherent Christian ethic of consumption.

To teach that being ethical requires knowing foundational ethical principles – or, as Socrates claimed, airtight definitions of ethical terms – is to invite cynicism among students, for students discover that no such principles can be found. Aristotle differs from Socrates in claiming that ethics is about virtues primarily, and that one can be virtuous without having the sort of knowledge that characterizes mathematics or natural science. Aristotle is able to demonstrate that ethics and self-interest may overlap, that ethics is (...) largely compatible with common sense, and that Aristotle’s virtuous person can make ethical decisions rationally. Case studies can help students improve their ethical perception and keep their values from being overwhelmed by corporate culture. (shrink)

Behaviorism is consistent with the assumptions of perfect competition, with the homo economicus model, and with a form of ethics that enshrines market-based notions of utility, justice, and rights and encourages rational maximizing. Economics and business courses foster this deficient form of ethics, assuming an overriding desire for money, which, according to MacIntyre and Aristotle, crowds out the associative virtues. These beliefs, often associated with Taylor and Friedman, lead to such practices as incentive compensation, which would be effective only if (...) employees were homines economici and thus rational in the sense of knowing how to satisfy whatever desires they have. Against Davidson’s view that psychology cannot be a natural science, Aristotle believes that there can be a teleological, if not exact, science of behavior. Aristotle believes that emotions and objectives may be rational or irrational. But rationality—phronesis, practical wisdom—is not a matter of applying algorithms. Doris questions whether character generates the first premises of an agent’s practical syllogisms, while Haidt has argued that we often act on emotions rather than on the basis of the reasons that we claim motivate us. Aristotle agrees that many people are not virtuous and that weakness of the will is a common occurrence, and he agrees that emotion drives actions. But if you are virtuous, your emotions and desires support your rationality. Aristotle gives us reason to reject the notion that people are homines economici and to treat them as rational deliberators, in part by creating an appropriate culture. The claim that it is in the nature of human beings to deliberate rationally is in part aspirational, but also in part scientific—in Aristotle’s modest sense. (shrink)

Can humans flourish without destroying the earth? In this book, experts on many of the world's major and minor religious traditions address the question of human and earth flourishing. Each chapter considers specific religious ideas and specific environmental harms. Chapters are paired and the authors work in dialogue with one another. Taken together, the chapters reveal that the question of flourishing is deceptively simple. Most would agree that humans should flourish without destroying the earth. But not all humans have equal (...) opportunities to flourish. Additionally, on a basic physical level any human flourishing must, of necessity, cause some harm. These considerations of the price and distribution of flourishing raise unique questions about the status of humans and nature. This book represents a step toward reconciliation: that people and their ecosystems may live in peace, that people from different religious worldviews may engage in productive dialogue; in short, that all may flourish. (shrink)

Abstract:A complex organization is in effect a commons, which supervisory techniques cannot preserve from free riding. A corporate culture strong enough to create the requisite community-minded second-order desires and beliefs may be morally illegitimate. What morality requires is not local enforcement of foundational moral principles—a futile undertaking—but that the organization be a good community in that it permits the disaffected to exit, encourages reflective consideration of morality and the good life, and creates appropriate loyalty.

Abstract:There is good reason to take a virtue-based approach to business ethics. Moral principles are fairly useful in assessing actions, but understanding how moral people behave and how they become moral requires reference to virtues, some of which are important in business. We must go beyond virtues and refer to character, of which virtues are components, to grasp the relationship between moral assessment and psychological explanation. Virtues and other character traits are closely related to (in technical terms, they supervene on) (...) personality traits postulated by personality psychologists. They may therefore be featured in respectable psychological explanations. But good character fits no familiar psychological pattern. A person of good character is sufficiently self-aware and rational that his or her virtues are not accompanied by the vices that psychologists find usually associated with them. A course in business ethics can help develop this self-awareness, which a good life in business requires. (shrink)

Christopher McMahon links political theory and business ethics and thereby takes the latter to a new level of philosophical sophistication. McMahon argues that legitimate authority, political or managerial, characteristically preempts certain of one’s judgments, so that one may reasonably submit to a directive to do something that contravenes one’s principles. Authoritative preemption does not involve weighing reasons pro and con, as one who is considering breaking a promise must do: it disqualifies competing considerations.

In this article, I want to draw attention to one strand ofthe complex web of processes that are involved when people group others, including themselves, into social categories. I will focus on the tendency to treat members of one's own group more favorably than nonmembers, a tendency that has been called ingroup favoritism. The structure of the article has three parts. First I will offer anevolutionary argument as to why ingroup favoritism, or something very much like it, is required by (...) theories of the evolution of altruism. I will then review some of the basic social psychological research findings dealing with social categorization generally, and ingroup favoritism specifically. Finally, I will examine two problems in business ethics from the point of view of ingroup favoritism to suggest ways in which social psychological principles and findings may be mobilized to help solve problems of racial or gender discrimination in business contexts. (shrink)

The American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business has called for stronger ethics programs. There are two problems with this battle cry. First, the AACSB rejects, with weak arguments, the single best way to get ethics into the curriculum. Second, the AACSB can only vaguely describe some unpromising alternatives to that strategy. A number of leading business ethicists have challenged the AACSB to defend and clarify its views, to little avail. The proposed Procedures and Standards cannot by themselves bring about (...) any significant change in the teaching of business ethics. There is a gap between the AACSB’s professed objectives and the means for achieving the objectives and determining whether they are being achieved. The Statement about Curriculum Content gives great prominence to the teaching of business ethics, but the interpretation of the statement, especially in the standards for measuring achievement, shows how improbable it is that the proposed Procedures and Standards will have the desired impact. We must recognize the constraints on the AACSB as we consider current standards and the controversy over a free-standing course versus an integrated curricular approach. The evident conclusion is a call, not only to the AACSB but to all business school educators, to set the stage for strengthened ethics education rather than to have standards imposed on us from outside. (shrink)

If social scientists take natural science as a model, they may err in their predictions and may offer facile ethical views. Maclntyre assails them for this, but he is unduly pessimistic about business, and in rejecting the separation thesis he raises some difficulties about naturalism.Aristotle's views of the good life and of the close relationship between internal and external goods provide a corrective to Maclntyre, and in fact suggest how virtues can support social capital and thus prevail within and among (...) firms in competitive markets. Aristotle's views are not necessarily inimical to those underlying modern democratic capitalism, but they raise questions about the limits to the good life. The separation thesis misses the importance of addressing the questions with both empirical and ethical resources. (shrink)

Seeking justice, as Christians, means seriously reconsidering our food consumption in light of multiple instances of injustice: maltreatment of workers, animals, and the environment; and misdistribution of food both globally and domestically. A variety of solutions—including boycotts, labeling, local consumption, generous donations, and Food Sovereignty—would lead to a more just food system.

Public streets are central to the built environment, where individuals seek a fair share of the roadway’s benefits and harms. But the American street, an asphalt landscape typically defined and designed for cars, can be inaccessible, unhealthy, and dangerous for the non-motorized, whose transportation choices have the smallest ecological footprint. Concern for social equity and sustainability requires rethinking the street geographically and ethically, and asking: “In what sense is the street a space of justice? How do traditional street regulation and (...) design manifest ethical priorities? And what might a more just street look like, in theory and practice?” Such questions prompt one to engage both the spatial and moral, thus drawing from critical geography and ethics to analyze roadways in terms of fairness and relational wholeness, and argue for what might be called a shalom street. Engaging such ethical concepts with the technical vocabularies of street regulation and design requires analyzing how national model standards and their interpretation enforce and materialize justice on the street.The promise of more just alternatives such as more sustainable and fair “Complete Streets” to live in needs to be explored. (shrink)

We typically test norms with reference to their usefulness in dealing with social problems and issues, though sometimes we use hypernorms to evaluate them. The hypernorms that we find most acceptable do not guide action in the way local norms do. They do, however, raise challenging questions that we should ask in evaluating any practice and its associated norms. In this respect, they differ from the principles associated with traditional, as opposed to modern, morality. As societies become more alike, in (...) part as a result of globalization, they will face increasingly similar problems. Then their local norms will be more similar, and they will be more likely to share hypernorms. Insofar as we can agree to try to justify our hypernorms, we are likely to converge on the hypernorms characteristic of modern rather than traditional morality. But people are often attached to their old norms and so are not very good at seeing how hypernorms raise questions that challenge the old norms. Here moral imagination should aid in the adjustment process. A system of democratic capitalism is hospitable to a good kind of moral convergence. (shrink)

Moral Case Deliberations are reflective dialogues with a group of participants on their own moral dilemmas. Although MCD is successful as clinical ethics support, it also has limitations. 1. Lessons learned from individual MCDs are not shared in order to be used in other contexts 2. Moral learning stays limited to the participants of the MCD; 3. MCD requires quite some organisational effort, 4. MCD deals with one individual concrete case. It does not address other, similar cases. These limitations warrant (...) research into complementary ways of providing CES to healthcare professionals. Our research objective was therefore to develop a low threshold CES tool based on a series of MCDs on autonomy in long-term care. We used a qualitative research design in which we analyzed the process and content of a series of MCDs, combined with reflections on the theoretical background of MCD. In total 28 MCDs were analyzed by means of a thematic content analysis. In various rounds of development, the results of the analysis were combined with theoretical reflections on CES. Consequently, the tool was evaluated in three focus groups and adjusted. The CES tool, called ‘moral compass’, guides the users through a series of six subsequent questions in order to methodically reflect on their concrete moral dilemma, in the form of a booklet of 23 pages. It combines a methodical element that encourages and structures a reflection process with a substantive element, including norms, values, options, strategies, and insights regarding dealing with client autonomy. By using data from a series of MCDs, combined with theoretical reflections on MCD, ethics support and moral learning, we developed a thematic, low-threshold CES tool that supports healthcare professionals in daily practice in dealing with moral questions regarding client autonomy. It integrates examples and insights from earlier MCDs on the same topic. The moral compass is not a replacement of, but can be used complementary to MCD. The feasibility and impact of the moral compass need to be investigated in an evaluative follow-up study. The methodology presented in this paper may be used to develop moral compasses on different topics in various healthcare organizations. (shrink)

Abstract:Phillips and Margolis argue that moral philosophy is a poor basis for business ethics, but their narrow view of moral philosophy would exclude Aristotle, for one. They criticize me for assimilating states and organizations in using the Rawlsian device, but they put too much faith in Rawls’s distinction between states and voluntary organizations and pay too little attention to the continuities between them. Their plea for a conceptually autonomous ethics for organizations I interpret as reasonable and largely compatible with my (...) own stated opinion. (shrink)

This paper builds on London and Hart’s critique that Prahalad’s best-selling book prompted a unilateral effort to find a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Prahalad’s instrumental, firm-centered construction suggests, perhaps unintentionally, a buccaneering style of business enterprise devoted to capturing markets rather than enabling new socially entrepreneurial ventures for those otherwise trapped in conditions of extreme poverty. London and Hart reframe Prahalad’s insight into direct global business enterprise toward “creating a fortune with the base of the pyramid” rather (...) than at the BoP. This shift in language requires a recalibration of strategic focus, we argue, and will necessitate implementation of “moral imagination” to formulate new mental models that can frame the possibility of local entrepreneurs working collaboratively and discursively with development partners drawn from civil society, corporate, and government sectors. Successful partnerships will arise from interactive processes of emergent, co-creative learning within a shared problem domain or “community of practice”. We call attention to three related pluralist framings of situated learning within such communities of practice: decentered stakeholder networks; global action networks; and a focus on “faces and places” as a cognitive lens to humanize and locally situate diverse inhabitants within base of the pyramid partnership projects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life by Stanley Hauerwas, and: Without Apology: Sermons for Christ’s Church by Stanley HauerwasLaura M. HartmanApproaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Life Stanley Hauerwas grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2013. 251 pp. $24.00Without Apology: Sermons for Christ’s Church Stanley Hauerwas new york: seabury books, 2013. 169 pp. $18.00Stanley Hauerwas is prolific. By my count, there are forty-six (...) books to his name, including these two from 2013. And yet in the preface to Without Apology, he writes, “I am often asked, ‘How many books have you written?’ My truthful answer must be, ‘I have no idea.’ … I could count them, but I have no interest in doing so” (ix). Hauerwas’s reluctance to number his career in books shows his preference for smaller units of measurement (“how some reader may find this sermon, or that sentence or chapter … helpful”), but it also reflects his view that he is not the sole author of his works. To his credit, he mentions two influential women—his wife, Paula Gilbert, an experienced clergywoman, and his assistant, Carole Baker, who gives the sermons a “work-over” after they are written (ix).Those who know Hauerwas know what to expect from these volumes: thoughtful arguments that unflinchingly assert the centrality of Christ and of the Church; a heavy dose of pacifism; major appearances from John Howard Yoder and Karl Barth (as well as multiple cameos from fascinating authors who are now on my to-read list); and accessible, open prose outlining clear, thought-provoking arguments. The two books reviewed here are quite different from one another: Without Apology is a book of sermons; Approaching the End is a book of essays loosely organized around a theme of eschatology. But both contain the hallmarks of “classic Hauerwas”—his signature mix of virtue ethics, communitarian interests, and narrative sensibilities.Without Apology contains recent sermons, primarily in Episcopal churches. Drawing on lectionary readings, Hauerwas brings his own theological interpretation and creates fairly short, satisfying sermons, which he readily describes (in Paula Gilbert’s words) as “tight” (87). This collection also includes four sermons on the topic of priesthood and some other writings of note: the already-classic “An Open Letter to Christians Beginning College” (good for use with Christian undergraduates) and “Sexing the Ministry” (food for thought for [End Page 215] seminarian and clergy alike). Without Apology manifests several major themes, but the biggest of these connects with the title: Hauerwas is “unapologetic” about his Christian faith and doesn’t engage in theology of the “apologetic” style. His emphasis, rather, is on being truthfully present with one another in the church community.Approaching the End promises eschatological reflections and delivers on the promise. Although he is writing about eschatology, Hauerwas strongly maintains that he is not reaching his own “end” and disavows any contention that Approaching the End is a kind of “swan song” (xiv). He addresses politics and war in several chapters. In “The End of Sacrifice: An Apocalyptic Politics,” he makes the case that if Christians believe Jesus’s sacrifice was “the end of all sacrifices,” then we should not “continue to participate in the sacrifice of war” (36). Similar themes emerge in “War and Peace,” later in the volume. In “Church Matters: On Faith and Politics,” Hauerwas writes, “One of the challenges Christians confront is how the politics we helped create has made it difficult to sustain the material practices constitutive of an ecclesial culture to produce Christians” (68). He welcomes the “end” of churches and denominations as we know them because “it means that the church is finally free to be a politics” (86).Hauerwas also discusses the future of churches and denominations. “The End of Protestantism” reiterates that “if the church is to be faithful … then we must recover what it means for the church to be an alternative politics” (92). This chapter’s emphasis on Methodism and his appraisal of Methodists as “free church Catholics” (94) is of note. In “Which Church? What Unity?” Hauerwas discusses the ecumenical movement, prompted by George Lindbeck’s challenge to do so (98). Hauerwas’s... (shrink)

In response to Larry Rasmussen's article about religious ethics in the Anthropocene, I offer an analysis that both contextualizes and elaborates upon his ideas. I introduce other humanities disciplines that have already wrestled with this question, and scholars of color whose voices offer needed correctives to the colonial heritage of most academic disciplines. I explore topics including human agency, non-human agency, exploitation, and refuge. I encourage scholars in our field to move beyond questions of responsibility and lamentations of moral incompetence (...) and into concepts of right relationality and analysis of grassroots climate action already taking place in religious, ethical contexts. (shrink)

Aristotelian naturalism is a good vantage point from which to consider the moral implications of evolution. Sociobiologists err in arguing that evolution is the basis for morality: not all or only moral features and institutions are selected for. Nor does the longevity of an institution argue for its moral status. On the other hand, facts about human capacities can have implications concerning human obligations, as Aristotle suggests. Aristotle’s eudaimonistic approach to ethics suggests that the notion of interests is far subtler (...) than many have realized, and leaves open the possibility that cooperativeness may be adaptive, virtuous, and a good thing for the agent. Lawrence and Nohria argue along remarkably similar lines, and they provide evidence against those who would question the existence of character. But promising as the Aristotelian approach is, it seems to give an inadequate account of our moral responsibility to those who are not members of our community. (shrink)

BackgroundVarious forms of Clinical Ethics Support (CES) have been developed in health care organizations. Over the past years, increasing attention has been paid to the question of how to foster the quality of ethics support. In the Netherlands, a CES quality assessment project based on a responsive evaluation design has been implemented. CES practitioners themselves reflected upon the quality of ethics support within each other’s health care organizations. This study presents a qualitative evaluation of this Responsive Quality Assessment (RQA) project.MethodsCES (...) practitioners’ experiences with and perspectives on the RQA project were collected by means of ten semi-structured interviews. Both the data collection and the qualitative data analysis followed a stepwise approach, including continuous peer review and careful documentation of the decisions.ResultsThe main findings illustrate the relevance of the RQA with regard to fostering the quality of CES by connecting to context specific issues, such as gaining support from upper management and to solidify CES services within health care organizations. Based on their participation in the RQA, CES practitioners perceived a number of changes regarding CES in Dutch health care organizations after the RQA: acknowledgement of the relevance of CES for the quality of care; CES practices being more formalized; inspiration for developing new CES-related activities and more self-reflection on existing CES practices.ConclusionsThe evaluation of the RQA shows that this method facilitates an open learning process by actively involving CES practitioners and their concrete practices. Lessons learned include that “servant leadership” and more intensive guidance of RQA participants may help to further enhance both the critical dimension and the learning process within RQA. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY EXAMINES FEASTING AND FASTING IN LIGHT OF CHRISTIAN DEsires to eat as, with, and for Christ. Christ both fasted and feasted; Christians, in following his example, may embody him, encounter him, and eat in certain ways for his sake. In the Eucharist, Christians encounter and embody Christ, illuminating the ways that eating can be a holy practice. The Eucharist offers Christians transformative guidance and practical synthesis, allowing them to navigate the extremes of fasting and feasting. It encompasses and (...) enshrines both, allowing both enjoyment and abstention to be transformed into a fulfilled practice of consumption. Consuming Christ in the Eucharist helps Christians find ways to sanctify their consumption in other areas of life. (shrink)

The paper is aimed at analyzing the contribution that the Global Reporting Initiative makes to the field of sustainability reporting. It provides an overview of the multitude of initiatives aimed at standardizing corporate social responsibility efforts on a global scale and highlights the ways in which the GRI can be distinguished from other international initiatives. By evaluating GRI's goals and its claims, the paper provides an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of this critical initiative. It includes a discussion of (...) changes and new strategies that GRI proposes as part of its recently introduced G3 Guidelines. The authors contend that, despite certain remaining challenges, GRI has much to offer a stakeholder community that has for many decades been starved of quality, measurable and accountable corporate social information presented in an accessible and understandable format. (shrink)

Professor Fort (1999) imagines a dispute over the moral importance of certain facts, with David Messick and himself on one side and Donna Wood and me on the other. He has identified an important issue—ethical naturalism—but that issue is not a point of disagreement between Messick and me.Fort has some interesting ideas about how Messick’s views might help in creating organizations that are moral communities. Beyond noting that those ideas constitute the most important part of his essay and merit consideration, (...) I shall not comment on them.Moral philosophers who are naturalists—I am one—hold that there is no bright line between ought-statements and is-statements and that empirical facts have implications for moral facts. So, for example, that a certain practice helps a community survive is a strong sort of reason for claiming that it is a morally good practice, other things being equal. But most naturalists do not claim that any practice that has arisen by virtue of evolution isipso factoa morally good practice even if it does serve some purpose. Nor does ethical naturalism have a characteristic view of the extent to which our evolutionary history, as opposed to our rational deliberation, determines what we do. (shrink)

Despite this virtue's history as an instrument of women's oppression, modesty, at its most basic, means voluntary restraint of one's power, undertaken for the sake of others. It is a mechanism that modifies unequal power relationships and encourages greater compassion and fairness. I use a Christian perspective with influences from Jewish and Muslim sources to examine modesty. The modest person, I argue, must be in relationship with others, must be honestly aware of her impacts on others, must be sensitive to (...) those impacts, compassionate toward others, and willing to hold back for others' sakes. Moreover, modesty is not only a virtue that pertains to sexuality and clothing, but it also can promote virtuous environmental behavior, particularly as it leads to awareness of, and sensitivity to, the effects of everyday behaviors on vulnerable others. (shrink)

The second annual Alchemy Lecture was presented in November 2023 at York University to a sold out in-person audience and nearly one thousand live online viewers. Moderated by Christina Sharpe, the Alchemists-agile thinkers and practitioners working across a range of disciplines and geographies-convened to discuss their radical visions of the beautiful world, and the manifestos that may help to guide us there. Their treatises have been captured and luminously expanded in the pages of this book. Cherokee Nation citizen and professor (...) Joseph M. Pierce asserts that "[f]or this decolonial future to become possible, the guiding force must no longer be capital but relations." Informed by her practice of "curation as care," Brazilian film curator Janaína Oliveira evokes music and movement as a means toward this relationality: "it's almost by falling that you live.... The beautiful world dances the stumbles. The beautiful world dances dancing." Kenyan-British visual artist Phoebe Boswell uses the space of a virtual gallery to ask, "If we burn down the institution, what happens next? Do we trust ourselves to know?" and gestures toward the possibility of this "as yet unlived, unexperienced thing." Professor and MacArthur fellow Saidiya Hartman asks us to consider our capacity to burn, stating that "[P]ragmatism yields a profound tolerance of the unlivable." And Mexican-American author Cristina Rivera Garza gives us the language of the future in the subjunctive, which "lays the groundwork for the irruption.... The subjunctive is the smuggler who crosses the border of the future bearing unknown cargo." Through these expansive, transformative essays, new ways of being are threaded and proposed, illuminating our path towards this possible beautiful world. (shrink)

Virtue ethics, the authors believe, is distinct and superior to other options because it considers, in the first place, which preferences are worth pursuing, rather than just blindly maximizing preferences, and it takes into account intuitions, emotions and experience, instead of acting solely on abstract universal principles. Moreover, virtue ethics is seen as firmly rooted in human biology and psychology, particularly in our freedom, rationality, and sociability. Work, business, and management are presented as vital areas for the development of virtues, (...) not the least with a view to human flourishing. We conclude by introducing the articles included in this special issue. (shrink)

The virtue approach to business ethics is a topic of increasing importance within the business world. Focusing on Aristotle's theory that the virtues of character, rather than actions, are central to ethics, Edwin M. Hartman introduces readers of this book to the value of applying Aristotle's virtue approach to business. Using numerous real-world examples, he argues that business leaders have good reason to take character seriously when explaining and evaluating individuals in organisations. He demonstrates how the virtue approach can (...) deepen our understanding of business ethics, and how it can contribute to contemporary discussions of character, rationality, corporate culture, ethics education and global ethics. Written by one of the foremost Aristotelian scholars working in the field today, this authoritative introduction to the role of virtue ethics in business is a valuable primer for graduate students and academic researchers in business ethics, applied ethics and philosophy. (shrink)

In ‘The Tollgate Principles for the Governance of Geoengineering’, Stephen M. Gardiner and Augustin Fragnière develop a holistic framework for geoengineering governance, pointing out the importance...