People in the ancient world thought of vision as both an ethical tool and a tactile sense, akin to touch. Gazing upon someone—or oneself—was treated as a path to philosophical self-knowledge, but the question of tactility introduced an erotic element as well. In _The Mirror of the Self_, Shadi Bartsch asserts that these links among vision, sexuality, and self-knowledge are key to the classical understanding of the self. Weaving together literary theory, philosophy, and social history, Bartsch traces this complex notion (...) of self from Plato’s Greece to Seneca’s Rome. She starts by showing how ancient authors envisioned the mirror as both a tool for ethical self-improvement and, paradoxically, a sign of erotic self-indulgence. Her reading of the _Phaedrus_, for example, demonstrates that the mirroring gaze in Plato, because of its sexual possibilities, could not be adopted by Roman philosophers and their students. Bartsch goes on to examine the Roman treatment of the ethical and sexual gaze, and she traces how self-knowledge, the philosopher’s body, and the performance of virtue all played a role in shaping the Roman understanding of the nature of selfhood. Culminating in a profoundly original reading of _Medea_, _The Mirror of the Self_ illustrates how Seneca, in his Stoic quest for self-knowledge, embodies the Roman view, marking a new point in human thought about self-perception. Bartsch leads readers on a journey that unveils divided selves, moral hypocrisy, and lustful Stoics—and offers fresh insights about seminal works. At once sexy and philosophical, _The Mirror of the Self_ will be required reading for classicists, philosophers, and anthropologists alike. (shrink)

Discovery of temporal association patterns, temporal association rules from temporal databases is extensively studied by academic research community and applied in various industrial applications. Temporal association pattern discovery is extended to similarity based temporal association pattern discovery from time-stamped transaction datasets by researchers Yoo and Sashi Sekhar. They introduced methods for pruning through distance bounds, and have also introduced SEQUENTIAL and SPAMINE algorithms for pattern mining that are based on snapshot data scan and lattice data scan strategies respectively. Our previous (...) research introduced algorithms G-SPAMINE, MASTER, Z-SPAMINE for time profiled association pattern discovery. These algorithms applied distance measures SRIHASS, ASTRA, and KRISHNA SUDARSANA for similarity computations. SEQUENTIAL, SPAMINE, G-SPAMINE, MASTER, Z-SPAMINE approaches are all based on snapshot and lattice database scan strategies and prunes temporal itemsets by making use of lower bound, upper bound support time sequences and upper-lower distance bound, lower bound distance values. The major limitation of all these algorithms is their inevitability to eliminate dataset scanning process for knowing true supports of itemsets and essential need to have dataset available in memory. To eliminate the requirement of retaining dataset in main memory, algorithms VRKSHA and GANDIVA are two pioneering research contributions that introduced tree structure for time profiled temporal association mining. VRKSHA is based on snapshot tree scan technique while GANDIVA is a lattice tree scan based approach. VRKSHA and GANDIVA both apply Euclidean distance function, but they do not estimate support and distance bounds. This research introduces the pioneering work ULTIMATE that uses a novel tree structure. The tree is generated using similarity measure ASTRA. ULTIMATE uses support bound and distance bound computations for pruning temporal patterns. Experiment results showed that ULTIMATE outperforms SEQUENTIAL, SPAMINE, G-SPAMINE, MASTER, VRKSHA, GANDIVA algorithms. (shrink)

Education as a Thick Epistemic Concept (ETEC) is a thick epistemology project that highlights the role of education in both epistemic virtues acquirement and motivation. In this paper, I argue that ETEC is not satisfactory because it relies on a version of Virtue Responsibilism (VR) that is also not plausible, in so far as it relies on the premise that both the motivation and the action-guidedness of epistemic and moral virtues are unified. By rejecting this unification premise, I show that (...) an epistemically virtuous person is not necessarily a morally virtuous/caring person either. It might happen to be the case that an epistemically virtuous person is also a morally virtuous person. However, there is no necessary connection between the two since there can be a sharp gap between their motivation and their action-guidedness. I also argue that there are bad forms of education that can further sharpen the gap between epistemic and moral virtues, further undermining ETEC. Thus, when it comes to education, a thick epistemology project should consider how different forms of education can sharpen the gap in the motivation and the action-guidedness of different types of virtues developed by learners. (shrink)

This article is concerned with "all-or-nothing" approaches to female genital cosmetic surgeries, those that overemphasize either women's autonomy to defend total accessibility or the oppressive social context affecting women to defend the total banning of the procedures. By contrast, the author takes both phenomena into consideration. The author argues identifying patterns of false consciousness and weighing those against harm done to a patient provides a moral basis for a doctor to possibly deny their consent at face value. This also requires (...) a shift in understanding the doctor–patient relationship as a first step toward a feminist model for women's healthcare. (shrink)

_Erotikon_ brings together leading contemporary intellectuals from a variety of fields for an expansive debate on the full meaning of _eros_. Renowned scholars of philosophy, literature, classics, psychoanalysis, theology, and art history join poets and a novelist to offer fresh insights into a topic that is at once ancient and forever young. Restricted neither by historical period nor by genre, these contributions explore manifestations of _eros_ throughout Western culture, in subjects ranging from ancient philosophy and baroque architecture to modern literature (...) and Hollywood cinema. An idea charged with paradox, _eros_ has always defied categorization, and yet it cannot—it will not—be ignored. _Erotikon_ aims to raise the difficult question of what, if anything, unifies the erotic manifold. How is _eros_ in a sculpture like _eros_ in a poem? Does the ancient story of Cupid and Psyche still speak meaningfully to modern readers, and if so, why? Is Plato's _eros_ the same as Freud's? Or Proust's? And what is the erotic dimension in Nietzsche's thought? While each essay takes on a specific issue, together they constitute a wide-ranging conversation in which these broader questions are at play. A compilation of the latest, best efforts to reckon with _eros_, _Erotikon_ will appeal not just to scholars and educators, but also to artists and critics, to the curious and the disillusioned, to the prurient and the prudent. (shrink)

This paper engages Alex Dubilet’s _The Self-Emptying Subject: Kenosis and Immanence, Medieval to Modern_ and his account of immanence and kenosis as exhibited in his reading of Hegel’s concept of _Entäußerung_ [externalization]. Specifically, I focus on the “problematic of desubjectivation” that centers Dubilet’s critique of transcendence and its relationship to subjection and subjectivity. I reconsider the relationship made between this problematic, the ethics of kenosis, and the concept of immanence so as to demonstrate the ways in which Dubilet attempts to (...) depart from transcendence, subjectivity, and their concomitant ethics. In particular, I consider his reading of Hegel’s concept of _Entäußerung_ and its similarities to the Young Hegelians’ understanding of this concept. My reading of Dubilet suggests that while he seeks to depart from transcendence, he reintroduces transcendence through the “problematic of desubjectivation” and its relationship to kenosis. In conclusion, I question the philosophical import of immanence in contemporary critical inquiry and why its conceptualization is often positioned in opposition to transcendence. (shrink)

La "technologie" est au coeur de notre vie sans que souvent nous en ayons conscience. D'où la question de l'unité de cette technologie à travers de multiples disciplines. C'est à cette interrogation que tentent de répondre les échanges internationaux organisés par l'Université libano-française de Tripoli. Trois notions-clefs sont au coeur du débat : la reconnaissance de la sphère technique dans la culture ; l'existence de mécanismes de classification et normalisation d'un savoir et d'un langage spécifique grâce à la culture et (...) la validité d'un modèle "mondialiste" ou systématique contemporain. On s'interroge sur le Sens des parts mécanique, théorique et pratique de notre civilisation ainsi que sur les moyens dont elle dispose pour créer une nouveauté qui préserve les intérêts de tous. Tel est l'objet de cet ouvrage : aider un individu aujourd'hui et demain à mieux s'adapter à cet ordre "technologique" dont les implications culturelles sont immenses, abordées ici sans préjugés, de manière plurielle, rationnelle et démocratique. (shrink)

Proceedings of the International Workshop "Islamic Peace Ethics: Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence in Contemporary Islamic Thought", organized 15-17 October 2015 by the Institute for Theology and Peace (ithf), Hamburg. More than 20 researchers from different countries including Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Germany, UK, USA, and Belgium discussed the peace and war in contemporary Islamic thought from different disciplines such as theology, philosophy, religious studies, cultural studies, and political sciences.

The present study used quantitative and qualitative measures to examine Iranian applied linguists’ (mis-) conceptions of ethical issues in research. For this purpose, one hundred and twelve applied linguists completed a research ethics questionnaire constructed and validated by the researchers. In the follow-up qualitative phase, 15 applied linguists who were faculty members participated in semi-instructed interviews. Data were analyzed using exploratory factors analyses for the first phase and theme analyses for the second phase. Quantitative results showed that the most important (...) misconceptions among Iranian applied linguists lingered on working with data (data collection and data analyses). For example, removing an outlier was a prevalent act conducted by applied linguists in the present study. Teachers using their students as participants of their own research as well as how they treated those students after a study were other controversial issues. The qualitative results revealed several themes including _lack of knowledge, conflict with real-world practices, a product-oriented approach to education and a publish or perish mentality_ as the reasons for misconceptions of ethics in applied linguistics among Iranian researchers. On general terms, there was an implicit agreement regarding the lack of training on research ethics among Iranian applied linguists. (shrink)

Background and aim Difficult moral situations assume more critical importance in pediatric wards since children are more vulnerable than adults. Given that professional ethics is a substantial part of children treatment, the present study was conducted to determine the ethical performance of nurses from the perspective of mothers and nurses in the pediatric wards of Be'esat Hospital in Hamadan. Materials and methods The present descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 58 nurses and 263 mothers of children referred to the pediatric wards (...) of Be'esat Hospital in Hamadan in 2019. The study samples were randomly selected. Data collection tools included the demographic form and Ethical Performance Assessment Questionnaire developed by Beykmirza et al. The obtained data were analyzed in SPSS software version 23using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results As evidenced by the obtained results, the mean ethical performance of nurses from the perspective of nurses and mothers were reported as 86.72 ± 6.397 and 69.92 ± 18.09. From the mothers' viewpoint, 27%, 39.2%, and 33.8% of nurses had weak, moderate and good levels of performance, respectively. On the other hand, from the nurses' perspective, 24.6% and 75.4% of nurses had moderate and good levels of performance, respectively. The obtained results were indicative of a statistically significant difference between the performance score as reported by mothers and nurses (P < 0.001). Conclusion Considering that the majority of mothers rated the ethical performance of nurses as weak and moderate, it is suggested that professional ethical principles be implemented in the form of Retraining programs in an attempt to improve the ethical performance of nurses. (shrink)

This collection of essays by well-known scholars of Seneca focuses on the multifaceted ways in which Seneca, as philosopher, politician, poet and Roman senator, engaged with the question of ethical selfhood. The contributors explore the main cruces of Senecan scholarship, such as whether Seneca's treatment of the self is original in its historical context; whether Seneca's Stoicism can be reconciled with the pull of rhetorical and literary self-expression; and how Seneca claims to teach psychic self-integration. Most importantly, the contributors debate (...) to what degree, if at all, the absence of a technically articulated concept of selfhood should cause us to hesitate in seeking a distinctively Senecan self - one that stands out not only for the 'intensity of its relations to self', as Foucault famously put it, but also for the way in which those relations to self are couched. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that there is a bidirectional relationship between gender-based social norms and gender-segregated education policies that excludes girls from knowledge production within the Iranian school system. I argue that gender segregation in education reproduces hermeneutic inequality through the reinforcement of epistemic segregation as a form of epistemic injustice. In particular, I focus on gender-based instructional epistemic injustice, which refers to a set of epistemic practices that actively exclude a student or an education professional in their capacity (...) as a knower from the process of knowledge production within an education system based on gender dynamics, roles, norms, or expectations. This, in addition, has an impact on schoolboys through the reproduction of active ignorance. I conclude that in societies such as Iran, where highly gendered norms play out in the school system and are further reinforced by that system, the result is not limited to gender segregation itself, but extends beyond it to a form of epistemic injustice that wrongs students by reproducing and reinforcing those highly gendered norms. (shrink)

This study linked background TV and socioeconomic status to minority children’s Persian vocabulary development. To this end, 80 Iranian preschool children from two minority groups of Arabs and Turks were selected using stratified random sampling. They were simultaneous bilinguals, i.e., their mother tongue was either Arabic or Azari and their first language was Persian. Language sample analysis was used to measure vocabulary development through a 15-min interview by language experts. The LSA measures included total number of utterances, total number of (...) words, total number of new words, and mean length of utterance. A series of independent-samples t test, paired-samples t test, and repeated measures MANOVA tests were ran to examine data. Results showed significant improvements in children’s vocabulary scores from pretest to posttest for all children. In addition, high-SES children scored higher on the vocabulary measures in pretest and posttest. Moreover, background TV was associated with higher means in the TNW and the NDW in groups. The researchers concluded that background TV may be related to higher vocabulary scores in low-SES families as it may compensate for some linguistics gaps in these families including lower amount of child-parent interaction, play, and parents’ level of literacy. (shrink)

In this article, we propose an initial formal model of computationalism based on mathematical relations between cognition and computation. More specifically, based on a set of cognitive constituents as a domain, and a set of computational implementations as a range, we define two relations of transformation over these sets. Moreover, we define the principles of implementability, describability, and phenomena correspondence, and we conjecture that full computationalism does not hold since these principles are not fulfilled. Particularly, many cognitively-tied phenomena fail to (...) respect the describability principle which is necessary for representing a cognitive state by a computational state. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 2, Page 398-418, April 2022.

On literary works, art, and politics related to philosophy.

Sufism has been neglected in the religious discourse and educational practices of modernist Muslims in the Islamic world, including Indonesia, where Kiai Moechtar Boechari (1899-1926) had emerged as an early activist in the Muhammadiyah Surakarta and Sufism. This research aims to examine Kiai Boechari’s religious thought, emphasizing the idea of Sufism as a practice of moral education (_akhlaq_). The data of research comprised mainly documentation and library archives. The findings reveal that Kiai Boechari’s religious thinking was driven by persistence in (...) reformulating Islam to be relevant and able to answer the challenges of the modern era based on purification and dynamization. Boechari emphasized on the problem of purifying faith (_aqidah_), the dynamics of worldly _muamalah_ problems, comparative religions, women’s emancipation, and moral Sufism. Kiai Boechari’s Sufism thought emphasized the purification of _aq__i__dah_, guided by the Quran and Sunnah, respect for the Shari’a, and the practice of individual social moral education, which are characteristics of the typology of Sufism (_transcendental mysticism_), moral Sufism, and orthodox/prophetic Sufism. This was known as neo-Sufism formulated by Kiai Boechari to practice moral education. It requires persistence to carry out the process of purifying oneself from despicable and immoral traits (_takhalli_), such as anger, envy, arrogance, pride, riya, and the urge to lust; which eventually starts the process of internalizing good qualities (_tahalli_), culminating in _mahabbah_, the disappearance of the human hijab (_tajalli_), giving a peak of spiritual experience. This study implicates that, in the prophetic orientation of Sufism, spiritual experience is not an end in itself, for the sake of the experience itself, but to give meaning to actions in history. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to know the relationship between student perception towards mathematics teacher with mathematics academic performace. The population of the study were all students of class VIII SMPN 8 Cirebon in the academic year 2014/2015, with the number of students 287 people. The sampling technique used proportional random sampling, and the sample size was 56 students. Data collection techniques used: 1) Questionnaire of Perceptions towards Mathematics teacher, and 2) The results of student mathematics learning test. The (...) result of correlation analysis show no significant correlation between students perception towards teacher and academic performance (r= .155, p= .254). (shrink)

The surprising story of how Greek classics are being pressed into use in contemporary China to support the regime’s political agenda As improbable as it may sound, an illuminating way to understand today’s China and how it views the West is to look at the astonishing ways Chinese intellectuals are interpreting—or is it misinterpreting?—the Greek classics. In Plato Goes to China, Shadi Bartsch offers a provocative look at Chinese politics and ideology by exploring Chinese readings of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and (...) other ancient writers. She shows how Chinese thinkers have dramatically recast the Greek classics to support China’s political agenda, diagnose the ills of the West, and assert the superiority of China’s own Confucian classical tradition. In a lively account that ranges from the Jesuits to Xi Jinping, Bartsch traces how the fortunes of the Greek classics have changed in China since the seventeenth century. Before the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese typically read Greek philosophy and political theory in order to promote democratic reform or discover the secrets of the success of Western democracy and science. No longer. Today, many Chinese intellectuals use these texts to critique concepts such as democracy, citizenship, and rationality. Plato’s “Noble Lie,” in which citizens are kept in their castes through deception, is lauded; Aristotle’s Politics is seen as civic brainwashing; and Thucydides’s criticism of Athenian democracy is applied to modern America. What do antiquity’s “dead white men” have left to teach? By uncovering the unusual ways Chinese thinkers are answering that question, Plato Goes to China opens a surprising new window on China today. (shrink)

This study investigates whether financial performance is affected by corporate violations of laws and regulations. In a sample of 128 publicly traded banks that were subject to enforcement actions by US regulatory authorities over a 20-year period, we observed a significant negative market reaction pursuant to the violations. However, the market reaction did not vary meaningfully in accordance with the severity or repetitiveness of the violation. The results of this study are in conformity with previous research on industries other than (...) banking, notably with regard to negative market reaction. This confirms that shareholders in the banking industry react in a manner considerably similar to their counterparts in other industries. (shrink)

This study empirically examines the relationship between wide-ranging board diversity and the quality of corporate social responsibility disclosure variables in Malaysia. We extend prior literature covering broader dimensions of board diversity and their impact on CSR after controlling for board and audit committee characteristics. Using 200 listed firms in Bursa Malaysia during 2009–2013 and applying both OLS and 2SLS instrumental variables approaches, we document significant positive effect of board education level and board tenure diversity on the quality of CSR disclosure. (...) Further analysis using robust regression also shows positive association between gender diversity and CSR disclosure. Our findings also demonstrate that the quality of CSR disclosure is significantly negatively associated with board age and nationality diversity. These results remain consistent with using alternative measures for board diversity, and characteristics for board of director and audit committees as well as split samples between large and small firms. Additional tests exhibit complementary relationship of education level and nationality with gender, while substitutive relationship of age and tenure with gender in influencing CSR. These findings provide useful insights into the policy makers in setting regulations in respect of board diversity in Malaysia and other emerging economies in the Asian region. Our evidence is also useful for listed companies in setting the criteria to identify directors who can support their strategic decisions. (shrink)

The Roman statesman, philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca dramatically influenced the progression of Western thought. His works have had an unparalleled impact on the development of ethical theory, shaping a code of behavior for dealing with tyranny in his own age that endures today. This Companion thoroughly examines the complete Senecan corpus, with special emphasis on the aspects of his writings that have challenged interpretation. The authors place Seneca in the context of the ancient world and trace his impressive (...) legacy in literature, art, religion, and politics from Neronian Rome to the early modern period. Through critical discussion of the recent proliferation of Senecan studies, this volume compellingly illustrates how the perception of Seneca and his particular type of Stoicism has evolved over time. It provides a comprehensive overview that will benefit students and scholars in classics, comparative literature, history, philosophy and political theory, as well as general readers. (shrink)

This article examines ḥikma as it was practiced by Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, or Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1640), in explaining the connection between the divine names and the attributes of God. This is done via a translation of the fourth part of his al-Maẓāhir al-ilāhiyya fī asrār al-ʿulūm al-kamāliyya [The loci of divine manifestations in the secrets of the knowledge of perfection]. Ḥikma, philosophy, as it is defined here, is the combination of rational demonstrations and spiritual unveiling. Shīrāzī’s philosophy is a (...) synthesis of Ibn ʿArabī’s school of metaphysical unveiling, the Ishrāqī school led by Suhrawardī, and the rational school of the Peripatetics. The text is translated here for the first time, and includes annotations. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:The present article examines the utopian and theological politics of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity). I focus on the Ikhwān’s elusive “virtuous city,” a harmonious and righteous community situated on a wondrous island, where residents work in unison toward salvation by deferring to one creed. This city’s imagery is intimately tied to principal theological dimensions of their work. Through the virtuous city, the Ikhwān utilize the imagery of estrangement to elucidate their theological position on the soul’s imprisonment in the (...) body. But there is another, subtler dimension to their utopianism. I argue that the Ikhwānian utopia serves as a juxtaposition to their Muslim society, which they thought was afflicted by credal divisions. Accordingly, their utopia seam-lessly weaves together a synthetic narrative about eschatology (i.e., the afterlife) and an empirical critique of their contemporary society. Additionally, this paper contributes to the development of scholarship on medieval Islamic utopianism. (shrink)

Islamic political thought has long been concerned with the abuses of tyranny. To contemporary Islamists, the tyrant is the ruler who adopts foreign ideas opposed to the original values of Islam. This sentiment is sometimes coupled with calls for revolutionary violence, a view popularized by the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb.1 While to some modern Islamists tyrannical rule signifies encroaching Western hegemony, its premodern use was less geographically specific. The Prophet Muhammad had simply stipulated that the "best struggle is a word (...) of truth [spoken] to a tyrannical [or unjust] ruler".2 This maxim alone does not describe the tyrant's cultural and religious... (shrink)

Ce travail de recherche porte sur des erreurs phonétiques dans l’apprentissage d’une langue étrangère, plus particulièrement la production de deux groupes consonantiques /bR/ et /kR/ du français langue étrangère (FLE) par 6 apprenants iraniens au niveau débutant (A1). L’objectif est d’analyser et d’expliquer les écarts de prononciation engendrés par ces deux groupes consonantiques. Pour cela, les productions de 8 mots français par 6 apprenants de première année de la langue française ont été enregistrées et analysées. Les résultats de cette étude (...) montrent que la prononciation de ces groupes consonantiques est erronée et deux éléments causent cette difficulté : les caractéristiques acoustiques des composants du groupe consonantique et la position du groupe dans le mot. Nous avons observé cinq causes d’erreur : le non relâchement de la consonne, le découpage du groupe, l’ajout d’un son vocoïde, l’élision d’une des composantes du groupe et la substitution d’une consonne du groupe par u... (shrink)

This level of using ICT in education from the perspectives of school principals was explored in this investigation. The descriptive analytical method was used as the methodology and the study sample included 183 school principals, who were selected randomly from different public schools in the UAE. A questionnaire was prepared and formulated in its initial form, which consists of (58) items distributed among the six dimensions The findings found that school principals agreed on the importance of using ICT for the (...) management of school examinations and results, as it came in first place with a percentage of 81.28, which is a high degree. The findings also showed that school principals have similar views on the use of ICT in school administration regardless of their gender. Both male and female principals use ICT tools and think it is important in school administration. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide insights into the Malaysian newspaper reports on apostasy cases in the country. Being a Muslim country with multi-religions, apostasy is highly sensitive hence any issues related to apostasy need to be carefully managed. Four keywords were used to identify newspaper reports for the analysis. Two newspaper reports met the selection criteria and were analysed using a discourse analysis approach focusing on Grammatical Analysis, Macrostructures, and Rhetorical Structures. The analysis reveals that the report in New Straits (...) Times, which is the right-wing newspaper, carries the voice of anti-apostate and disapproves the act of renouncing Islam. On the other hand, the report in The Malay Mail, which is the left-wing newspaper, carries the voice of pro-apostate. By deconstructing the newspaper reports, this paper contributes to the understanding of the agendas that have been subtly set in the news. This paper concludes that the two reports have been strategically constructed to serve the interests and promote the ideology of the two competing groups in the country, thus creating a balance in the multi-religious context. (shrink)

The post-September 11th era has presented immense challenges and disappointing setbacks for the advancement of human rights. Yet, the era has also been marked by complexity, paradoxes and ample opportunities for introspection as events expose contemporary human rights' various weaknesses and contradictions. This article provides an overview of the interplay between the human rights concept's various instrumental appropriations and its more autonomous emancipatory capacity manifested in post-September 11th developments. Instead of an exhaustive examination, the article simply poses and juxtaposes different (...) dimensions and layers of the formidable presence of the human rights idea in post-September 11th developments impacting the Middle East. To this end, it places a particular emphasis on human rights' capacity to simultaneously aid, transcend and confront local and international power structures.The article begins with a discussion of the ways in which American hegemony is both bolstered and challenged through human rights discourses after September 11th. It then turns to the Middle Eastern encounter with human rights amidst the American "War on Terror." It is argued that while widespread Middle Eastern consciousness of American appropriations of human rights foster cynicism about the promise and legitimacy of human rights, post-September 11th dynamics have also resulted in greater Middle Eastern engagement with the human rights concept and international human rights norms. In subsequent sections, the article presents a brief outline of the various challenges and openings presented for human rights advocacy in the last few years followed by a discussion of the renewed imperative for a genuine international human rights dialogue. Throughout the article, examples are presented of how pre-existing human rights geographies and hierarchies ascribing relativism to the East and universalism to the West have been unsettled during this period. (shrink)

Edición de lujo bilingüe castellano-inglés, editada en papel couché que contiene bellas fotografías a color del complejo arqueológico de Caral, incluyendo todos sus edificios y objetos, los cuales denotan la inteligencia, la prosperidad y los logros alcanzados por esta civilización. Los textos son breves.

A number of advocates for TQM contend that firms who embrace TQM will automatically and naturally act in ethically sound ways (Roth, 1993; Pace, 1999; Steeples, 1994). This claim is a strong one. This paper assesses its truth. We consider the many ways in which quality initiatives, if undertaken in good faith, can foster sound ethics. We explore the various ways in which TQM presupposes, and thus cannot engender, ethical behavior. And, finally, we identify some of the ethical blind spots (...) in quality initiatives and TQM. We propose that if TQM is undertaken by thoughtful people who take steps to correct its ethical blind spots and who understand the need for an ethical underpinning, then TQM and ethics will prove mutually reinforcing. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show that the reasons-responsiveness theory of rationality fails to explain the intuitive irrationality of practical akrasia. First, I argue that the best explanation for the distinction between acting in accordance with a normative reason and responding to that reason involves appealing to one’s competence or knowledge about how to respond to that reason. Second, one might possess practical competence to respond to her decisive practical reasons to act, without having the parallel theoretical competence (...) to believe rationally, through deliberation, that she has decisive reasons to perform that action. Third, if possessing a normative reason is a matter of having the ability to respond to that reason, and responding to a reason is grounded in facts about one’s competence about how to respond to that reason, then the mismatch between one’s practical and theoretical competences may give rise to a normative mismatch between one’s possessed reasons for action and one’s possessed reasons for one's normative beliefs. There would be possible situations in which one possesses decisive reasons to perform an action ⱷ but lacks sufficient reasons to believe that she has decisive reasons to ⱷ. In those situations, the reasons-responsiveness theory requires one to act against her normative judgment about what she ought to do. I conclude by considering whether it could be rationally permissible to act against one’s own normative judgment about what one ought to do if one’s reasons for action diverge from one’s reasons for a certain judgment about what one ought to do. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Malaysia’s 13th general election in 2013 was the final election where the longest-serving elected government in the world, Barisan Nasional, regained power, before it was ousted after over six decades of authoritarian rule in 2018. In a country that practises parliamentary democracy but simultaneously observed close cooperation between the then ruling coalition and the mainstream press, this paper shows the micro-politics of the driving force of the coalition, United Malays National Organisation – specifically, how anxiety regarding the maintenance of (...) their privileged and empowered Malay position dominated the national narrative during the GE13 campaign. Focusing on editorial journalistic genres in four paid-for Malay-language newspapers, I illustrate the typical politics of fear that characterises much of Malaysian right-wing rhetoric – the ways in which racial and religion issues are provoked. The in-depth representational analysis, via the Discourse-historical Approach’s nomination and predication strategies, also suggests the normalisation of nationalistic and racist rhetoric, which primarily works with ‘fear’: fear of change, of loss of privilege, of the future, of other races; in principle, almost anything can be constructed as a threat to ‘Us’, an imagined homogenous people inside a well-protected territory through the discursive construction of such in-groups and out-groups. (shrink)

This study was carried out to investigate the roles of epistemic beliefs and writing self-efficacy in predicting second language writing anxiety among learners of English as a foreign language. To this end, three validated scales were distributed among 240 EFL students. They were asked to complete the questionnaires during their regular courses. A structural equation modeling approach was utilized to analyze the hypothesized SEM model and the causal paths among the constructs. The direct and indirect path analyses of the hypothesized (...) model indicated that EBs and WSE accounted for 43% of the variance in L2WA. Although both constructs had a significant effect on L2WA, EBs turned out to be a robust predictor of increasing L2WA. Notably, it was revealed that learners’ EBs directly and significantly influenced their L2WA. Besides, the results indicated that WSE had a unique effect in reducing L2WA. More precisely, students who had a higher level of EBs seemed to have a greater L2WA, and those who had a higher level of WSE experienced less L2WA. The findings of this explanatory study suggest that L2 teachers and material developers should pay serious attention to the Students’ cognitive and affective variables as they were known to be significant factors in influencing L2WA. (shrink)

The corona pandemic altered many traditional and historical norms of society and law. COVID-19 created a humanitarian crisis in some parts of globe, while pandemic privacy and civil liberties were under threat all over world. To combat the deadly virus, individual liberty and equality were compromised. This paper focuses on how India’s health problem has compromised people’s right to privacy. It will highlight how strict executive policies led to the creation of a massive surveillance system in the name of combating (...) the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how the absence of any policy or legal framework led to the exclusion of individuals and their families who were suspected of having the virus or caring for those who were infected with the deadly virus. The paper uses case studies and data collected from primary as well as secondary sources. The authors will also point out how the absence of privacy regulation puts millions of citizens’ private information at risk of being compromised or exploited against their will. (shrink)