This literature review systematically synthesizes studies that link consumer research to differences and similarities in virtue ethics between the East and the West, with a focus on early Chinese and ancient Greek virtue ethics. These two major traditions provide principles that guide consumer behavior and thus serve as a background to comparatively explain and evaluate the ethical nature of consumer behavior in the East and the West. The paper first covers Eastern and Western theoretical and normative approaches of virtue ethics (...) in the field of consumer research. The subsequent systematic literature review then synthesizes empirical works in this field. Since only a few papers adopt a cross-cultural consumer research perspective, one of the main aims of this review is to encourage scholars to pursue both theoretical and empirical cross-cultural consumer research on virtue ethics. To this end, the paper closes by suggesting some fruitful directions for future research to stimulate this relatively under-researched area. (shrink)

Collaborative consumption activities like saving food and buying used clothes are an important and rapidly growing part of sustainable consumer behavior. Many political and commercial campaigns promote collaborative consumption practices by highlighting subsets of normative motives, such as sustainable, social, and ecological effects. Whether or not consumers can comprehend these claims and incorporate them into their decision-making process is, however, unclear. This article introduces a new experimental study design to ethical consumer research—an adapted version of the Defining Issues Test—that enables (...) to assess consumers’ ability to cognitively and intuitively understand moral arguments in collaborative consumption contexts. The experiment was conducted with N = 435 collaborative consumers from Germany. The findings indicate that in different collaborative consumption contexts, consumers consider different moral arguments as important. Furthermore, the findings also indicate that consumers can incorporate the provider’s point of view in their moral judgment. (shrink)

Designed to be used on its own or with its companion text, Ultimate Questions: Thinking About Philosophy 3e, this collection of readings covers the major topic areas in philosophy: Knowledge; Free Will; Personal Identity; Mind/Body; God; Ethics; and Political Philosophy. While focusing primarily on contemporary philosophy, it also includes many of the classic works essential to an introductory course.

This print textbook is available for students to rent for their classes. The Pearson print rental program provides students with affordable access to learning materials, so they come to class ready to succeed. For courses in Introductory Philosophy An active approach to philosophy While most introduction to philosophy courses focus on reading philosophical texts, Ultimate Questions: Thinking about Philosophy pushes students toward an active learning approach. The text is designed to instigate meaningful discussions between students and instructors, relying on more (...) than 100 "Food for Thought" exercises throughout. These exercises are based on the author's own experience engaging students in lecture environments and are designed to help students discover how well they understand philosophical concepts and how to apply them to real-life scenarios. The 4th Edition has been extensively updated with a new chapter, chapter expansions, and more. (shrink)

Faced with the ongoing tragedy of poverty in our world today, many have long called for a common standard of global justice. Such a standard should not be tied to any one particular strand of justice conceptualizations and it should yet be in harmony with the central motivating beliefs of the various concerned moral worldviews. The article reframes global justice thinking by approaching a core problem, namely motivating people to care for distant needy strangers, in a concrete intercultural manner: it (...) sets out to study and compare the motivational underpinnings for an expansion of social justice, in an exemplary fashion, within two long-standing worldview traditions, namely Christian social ethics and contemporary Confucian ethics, in order to gain a more realistic impression of what a commonly shared and motivationally backed notion of global justice may look like. While the former expresses a universal concern for the poor, the latter has recently attracted interest, since Southeast Asian countries managed to lift millions of people out of abject poverty. As both traditions consider loving communal relationships to constitute the foundation of all justice considerations, the article inquires how this quest shapes each tradition’s way to motivate their adherents’ compliance with a vision of global justice. (shrink)

Faced with the ongoing tragedy of poverty, ethicists call for effective measures of global justice to set up just institutional structures. Their arguments for a transnational obligation to help however remain contested, one of the main reasons for that being the lack of motivational support for trans-national visions of global justice. This articles suggests that the debate will gain new and helpful insights if it studies the motivational mechanisms at work in the dominant religious and cultural traditions, asking: How do (...) these particular traditions conceive of social justice; how do they motivate their adherents to extend solidarity? And how can the similarities surfacing in their motivational strategies be informative for the quest to devise a motivationally saturated account of global justice? The article demonstrates the potential of such an concrete-universal discourse in an exemplary manner by staging a dialogue between public Christian Social Ethics and African Ubuntu Ethics. (shrink)

While the only extensive discussion of music in Kierkegaard’s work is the famous treatise based on Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni in the first part of the pseudonymous Either/or (1843), Kierkegaard did write other brief passages, in which he made comments on musical aspects. Two recent articles have pointed to attitudes toward music in such passages which seem to differ from the negative evaluation of music as a religious or theological medium in the first part of Either/or by the fictitious aesthete (...) A. With a point of departure in the two mentioned articles, I attempt to further discuss the possible relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic in Kierkegaard’s musical thought, involving passages from both parts of Either/or as well as a few journal-entries. Finally, Erika Fischer-Lichte’s distinction between staging and performativity is brought to bear on these issues. (shrink)

Armut ist immer noch die grosste Todesursache weltweit. Jahrlich sterben ca. 18 Mio. Menschen an ihren direkten und indirekten Folgen. Christliche Sozialethik will Armutsursachen aufdecken und dazu beitragen, dass diese durch die Etablierung von gerechten globalen Strukturen uberwunden werden. Globale Gerechtigkeit aber muss mehr sein als ein blosses Konstrukt westlicher Ethik. Sie muss als Ergebnis eines kulturubergreifenden Dialogs das bestimmen, was verschiedene Weltanschauungen konsensual als gerecht und zugleich realisierbar erachten. Die Arbeit untersucht in diesem Sinne christliche, afrikanische und konfuzianische Ethiktraditionen (...) auf ihr Verstandnis von Gerechtigkeit und Armut. Im Dialog mit der aktuellen philosophischen Diskussion erarbeitet sie konkrete Bausteine einer interkulturell erprobten Theorie globaler Gerechtigkeit. (shrink)

This book offers a multidisciplinary collection of historiographical case studies which in various ways explore the question of the modes of interrelation between 'change' and 'continuity' in historical narratives in Western cultural history."--Introduction, p. [1].

Bislang wurde Walter Benjamins Werk nicht auf Staatlichkeit hin gelesen, weist es doch weder eine Staatstheorie noch deren explizite Kritik auf. Der Staat als genuin politische Kategorie wird zwar kaum direkt, dafur aber uber andere Begriffe adressiert, wie Souveranitat und Gewalt, Produktionsverhaltnisse und Warenform oder soziale Kollektive wie Klasse und 'Volk'. Mit Problemen moderner Staatlichkeit beschaftigte sich Benjamin zeitlebens uber die kulturelle Sphare, und sein politisches Denken motivierte sich wesentlich aus Beobachtungen an Alltagsdingen und Konsumgutern sowie der Auseinandersetzung mit neuen (...) kunstlerischen Verfahren und Technologien. Der Band stellt diesen mittelbaren Zugriff heraus und versucht aufzuzeigen, welche Problemfelder von Benjamins politischem Denken je schon auf die Phanomene Staat und Staatlichkeit verweisen, ohne dass diese direkt angesprochen und ausgefuhrt wurden. Mit Beitragen von: Nils Baratella, Christine Blattler, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Wolfram Ette, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, Sebastian Jahn, Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Esther Leslie, Daniel Loick, Gerard Raulet, Sven Rucker, Gerhard Scheit, Falko Schmieder, Uwe Steiner, Martin Vialon, Christian Voller, Jannis Wagner. (shrink)

The Protestant Prussian humanist Daniel Hermann (1543-1601) wrote the occasional poem De vita literata sive scholastica which he performed publicly at the newly established Academy of Straßburg probably in 1567 on behalf of the Academys headmaster when he was still a student himself. In this poem he praises and characterizes the academic life as the most useful and most excellent occupation in the world. He shows that scholarship and science guide the thoughts and the feelings of the students, investigate what (...) is true and what is just, and show gods working. Besides he gives an historical outline of the academic life from the beginning of time up to his own era. He claims that scholarship and science were never more prosperous than in Christianity. He describes the difficulties of academic teaching as well as a scholars eternal fame by virtue of his writings and of his effects to the society. He stresses the importance of academic education as well as Christs help for the solution of present political and military problems. (shrink)

Unternehmen sind nicht nur wirtschaftliche, sondern auch politische Akteure. Vor allem aber sind sie entgegen verbreiteter Ansichten auch moralische Akteure, das heißt, sie sind grundsätzlich fähig, den moralischen Standpunkt einzunehmen, auch wenn sie dies in der Praxis selten tun. Daraus erwächst eine politische und moralische Verpflichtung: Auch für Unternehmen gelten die Menschenrechte als moralischer und rechtlicher Maßstab, daran müssen sich ihr Handeln und erst recht ihr Unterlassen messen lassen. Christian Neuhäuser zeigt mit beeindruckenden philosophischen Mitteln und anhand exponierter Beispiele (...) unternehmerischen Handelns, inwiefern und inwieweit Unternehmen moralisch zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden können. Dies hat weitreichende philosophische, ethische und nicht zuletzt politische Konsequenzen. (shrink)

In this book, Christian Barry and Sanjay G. Reddy propose ways in which the international trading system can support poor countries in promoting the well-being of their peoples.

Most discussions frame the Liar Paradox as a formal logical-linguistic puzzle. Attempts to resolve the paradox have focused very little so far on aspects of cognitive psychology and processing, because semantic and cognitive-psychological issues are generally assumed to be disjunct. I provide a motivation and carry out a cognitive-computational treatment of the liar paradox based on a cognitive-computational model of language and conceptual knowledge within the Predictive Processing framework. I suggest that the paradox arises as a failure of synchronization between (...) two ways of generating the liar situation in two different PP sub-models, one corresponding to language processing and the other to the processing of meaning and world-knowledge. In this way, I put forward the claim that the liar sentence is meaningless but has an air of meaningfulness. I address the possible objection that the proposal violates the Principle of Unrestricted Compositionality, which purportedly regulates the conceptual competence of thinkers. (shrink)

Ce livre traite du 11 septembre ; du triomphe de la télé réalité, des formes nouvelles de domination symbolique, du capitalisme culturel, mais il gravite autour d'un seul et même foyer : nous vivons une crise mondiale de narration, dont le symptôme le plus visible est une inflation narrative, la substitution de l'anecdote au récit. Qu'il emprunte la forme de l'essai ou du récit, ce livre décrit la situation d'un homme sans recours narratif face à l'expérience, qui ne sait plus (...) faire la distinction entre fait et fiction, et entre vrai et faux. Un homme qui représentait pour Hannah Arendt, "le sujet idéal du règne totalitaire". Un homme, en somme, sans récit. Face à l'empire, c'est le manque et l'impossibilité d'une contre-narration que Christian Salmon explore - et déplore - ici. i. (shrink)

Having its seeds in the 2nd International Lauener Symposium held in honour of Dagfinn Follesdal, the present collection contains a rich, kaleidoscopic ensemble of previously unpublished contributions by leading authors, representing diverse approaches to a variety of philosophical themes on which Follesdal has had a longstanding, formative impact. Follesdal himself contributes an orientating essay continuing to develop his pioneering theory of reference as well as in-depth commentaries on each of the other authors elaborated papers plus candid answers in the added (...) interview. The volume assembles a wealth of original articles containing in part direct discussions of Follesdal s work and covering a broad range of topics like subjectivity, intersubjectivity, objectivity, rationality, logics and mathematics, choice theory, values, modalities, intentionality, individuation, perception, communication, meaning, reference, the slingshot, one- and two-sorted semantics, evidence, neuropsychology, space and time, science and society, methodology, fallibilism, the relative a priori, justification, holism, the life-world, reflective equilibrium, empathy, and ethics. Moreover the book includes an incisive memoir of Follesdal the philosopher as well as a spanning interview with him, which are both critically directing toward Follesdal s subtly differentiated understanding of the dynamic philosophical horizon he shares in. With contributions from Dagfinn Follesdal, Charles Parsons, Patrick Suppes, Jon Elster, John Perry, Michael Friedman, Dag Prawitz, Wilhelm K. Essler, David Woodruff Smith, Olav Gjelsvik, Graciela De Pierris, Nils Roll-Hansen, Christian Beyer, Oystein Linnebo, Michael Frauchiger. Excerpt Open publication". (shrink)

Many groups make decisions over multiple interconnected propositions. The “doctrinal paradox” or “discursive dilemma” shows that propositionwise majority voting can generate inconsistent collective sets of judgments, even when individual sets of judgments are all consistent. I develop a simple model for determining the probability of the paradox, given various assumptions about the probability distribution of individual sets of judgments, including impartial culture and impartial anonymous culture assumptions. I prove several convergence results, identifying when the probability of the paradox converges to (...) 1, and when it converges to 0, as the number of individuals increases. Drawing on the Condorcet jury theorem and work by Bovens and Rabinowicz , I use the model to assess the “truth-tracking” performance of two decision procedures, the premise- and conclusion-based procedures. I compare the present results with existing results on the probability of Condorcet’s paradox. I suggest that the doctrinal paradox is likely to occur under plausible conditions. (shrink)

Main description: In seinem Werk untersucht Christian Dessau die rechtskulturelle Einbettung von Rechtstheorie in nationale Kontexte. Untersucht wird die Frage, welchen Einfluss externe Faktoren auf die Themenwahl und inhaltliche Ausprägung von Rechtswissenschaftlern, insbesondere Rechtstheoretikern, haben.Zu diesem Zwecke werden in der Studie drei Wissenschaftler internationalen Ranges aus Finnland, Schweden und Deutschland als Beispiele herangezogen, die in ihrem jeweiligen eigenen rechtskulturellen Kontext betrachtet werden: Aulis Aarnio, Aleksander Peczenik und Robert Alexy. Diesen ist gemeinsam, dass sie in den 1970er und 80er Jahren (...) jeweils eine Variation einer Argumentationstheorie des Rechtes vorgelegt haben. Die Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftler aus dieser Zeit werden vor dem Kontext ihrer jeweiligen Rechtskultur ausgelegt, um Hinweise auf eine Beeinflussung in Rahmen von vier Zonen herauszuarbeiten. Aufgrund ihres textorientierten Ansatzes stellt sich der disziplinäre Kontext bei allen drei Wissenschaftlern als besonders ergiebig heraus. Im Gegensatz zu klassischen rechtstheoretischen Arbeiten beschränkt sich der Verfasser nicht auf den theorieimmanenten Kontext, sondern betrachtet beispielsweise eine rechtswissenschaftliche Schule auch als einen sozialen Kontext. Methodisch ist die Studie interdisziplinär angelegt, so nutzt sie neben den rechtswissenschaftlichen Methoden parallel oder zu Zwecken der Validierung auch andere geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Methoden.Im Ergebnis zeigt der Autor viele Aspekte auf, die es als evident erscheinen lassen, dass auch im Feld der Rechtstheorie, die sich selbst eher als abstrakte und vom nationalen Recht losgelöste internationale Theorie versteht, eine Auslegung unter Berücksichtigung des rechtskulturellen Kontextes einen neuen Erkenntnisgewinn verspricht. (shrink)

This paper connects work in psychology on the Big Five Model to the recent debate in philosophy on the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics and virtue epistemology.

Distributive egalitarians believe that distributive justice is to be explained by the idea of distributive equality (DE) and that DE is of intrinsic value. The socio-relational critique argues that distributive egalitarianism does not account for the “true” value of equality, which rather lies in the idea of “equality as a substantive social value” (ESV). This paper examines the socio-relational critique and argues that it fails because – contrary to what the critique presupposes –, first, ESV is not conceptually distinct from (...) DE, and second, the idea of ESV cannot serve as a “foundation” or “root” of distributive egalitarianism. (shrink)

Krieg ist seit Anbeginn europäischer Kulturalität ein Topos, der in unterschiedlichster Weise einer theoretischen Reflexion unterzogen wurde und wird.

This paper argues that recent arguments to the effect that the debate between presentism and eternalism lacks any metaphysical substance ultimately fail, although important lessons can be gleaned from them in how to formulate a non-vacuous version of presentism. It suggests that presentism can best be characterized in the context of spacetime theories. The resulting position is an ersatzist version of presentism that admits merely non-present entities as abstracta deprived of physical existence. Ersatzist presentism both escapes the charges of triviality (...) and promises to offer a route to solving the grounding problem which befalls its more traditional cousins. (shrink)

Cette étude formule l'hypothèse critique d'une opération de remythologisation par une réactualisation théologico-politique de la tragédie chez Heidegger. Cette opération ne saurait simplement coïncider avec une revalorisation " irrationnelle " du mythe, car elle procède d'abord d'une mise en question, non moins problématique, de la dualité supposée entre muthos et logos pour culminer dans ce qu'une note des années 1950 appellera la " mytho-logie de l'événement ". La réélaboration de la notion de mythe s'accomplit à partir du poème de Hölderlin (...) qui doit préfigurer les dieux de l'" autre commencement " post-judéo-chrétien, selon le projet spéculatif d'une " religion " censée relier le peuple à ses dieux nouveaux via l'être comme événement. L'hypothèse d'une remythologisation théologico-politique doit ainsi permettre d'éclairer non seulement le rôle matriciel de Hölderlin pour la pensée de l'être, mais aussi le surinvestissement illusoire du national-socialisme censé donner lieu au " peuple de Hölderlin ". Pour interroger cette réactualisation théologico-politique du mythe, l'étude se concentre sur les cours que Heidegger consacra à Hölderlin, tout en sollicitant l'intégralité du corpus des années 1933-1945, c'est-à-dire les cours fribourgeois, les traités inédits rédigés dans le sillage des Contributions (Beiträge) et les Cahiers noirs (Schwarze Hefte). (shrink)

Books reviewed:John Barton, Joel and Obadiah: A Commentary John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, Volume III: Companions and CompetitorsWilliam E. Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of QRichard A. Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark's GospelMaurice Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark's GospelPhilip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost its WayChristopher M. Tuckett, Christology and the New Testament: Jesus and His Earliest FollowersMarkus Bockmuehl, The Cambridge Companion to JesusShelly (...) Matthews, First Converts: Rich Pagan Women and the Rhetoric of Mission in Early Judaism and ChristianityStephen J. Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late AntiquityJ. Nimmo Smith, A Christian's Guide to Greek Culture. The Pseudo‐Nonnus Commentaries on Sermons 4, 5, 39 and 43 by Gregory of Nazianzus: Introduction, Translation and Notes.David Thomas, Early Moslem Polemic Against Christianity: Abu Isa al‐Warraq's ‘Against the Incarnation’Thomas O'Loughlin, Celtic Theology: Humanity, World and God in Early Irish WritingsCaroline M. Baron and Jenny Stratford, The Church and Learning in Later Medieval Society: Essays in Honour of R. B. Dobson Owen Chadwick, The Early Reformation on the Continent Benson Bobrick, The Making of the English BiblePeter Marhall and Alec Ryrie, The Beginnings of English ProtestantismRobert Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England. Politics and Political Culture, c. 1540–1640Peter Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation EnglandNicholas Tyacke, Aspects of English Protestantism, c.1530–1700John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689William Gibson, The Church of England 1688–1832: Unity and AccordWarwick Gould and Marjorie Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth and Twentieth CenturiesJames M. Byrne, God: Thoughts in an Age of Uncertainty Michael Palmer, The Question of God: An Introduction and SourcebookMichel René Barnes, The Power of God: ΔYNAMIΣ in Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian TheologyThomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on VirtueStanley M. Hauerwas, Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth‐Century Theology and PhilosophyDavid Toole, Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo: Theological Reflections on Nihilism, Tragedy, and ApocalypseJohn Sullivan, Catholic Education: Distinctive and InclusiveGeorge Dennis O'Brien, The Idea of a Catholic UniversityGunnar Skirbekk and Nils Gilje, A History of Western ThoughtEllen Wagner, Essays on Plato's PsychologyAnthony Kenny, Aquinas on BeingJame Daly, Deals and Ideals: Two Concepts of EnlightenmentManfred Kuehn, Kant: A BiographyP. Travis Kroeker and Bruce K. Ward, Remembering the End: Dostoevsky as Prophet to ModernityStephen Mulhall, Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, KierkegaardDavid Braybrooke, Natural Law ModernizedMaría Pía Lara, Rethinking EvilW. W. Meisner, Freud and PsychoanalysisJennifer Jackson, Truth, Trust and MedicineJeremy Sugarman and Daniel P. Sulmasy, Methods in Medical EthicsH. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. and Mark J. Cherry, Allocating Scarce Medical Resources: Roman Catholic PerspectivesMaura A. Ryan, The Ethics and Economics of Assisted Reproduction: The Cost of LongingMichael Walsh, Dictionary of Christian Biography. (shrink)

In section one, I briefly review the Harman/Doris argument and outline the most promising response. Then in section two I develop what I take the real challenge to virtue ethics to be. The final section of the chapter suggests two strategies for beginning to address this challenge.

Individuality and collectivity are central concepts in sociological inquiry. Incorporating cultural history, social theory, urban and economic sociology, Borch proposes an innovative rethinking of these key terms and their interconnections via the concept of the social avalanche. Drawing on classical sociology, he argues that while individuality embodies a tension between the collective and individual autonomy, certain situations, such as crowds and other moments of group behaviour, can subsume the individual entirely within the collective. These events, or social avalanches, produce an (...) experience of being swept away suddenly and losing one's sense of self. Cities are often on the verge of social avalanches, their urban inhabitants torn between de-individualising external pressure and autonomous self-presentation. Similarly, Borch argues that present-day financial markets, dominated by computerised trading, abound with social avalanches and the tensional interplay of mimesis and autonomous decision-making. Borch argues that it is no longer humans but fully automated algorithms that avalanche in these markets. (shrink)

I. Allgemeine werttheorie, psychologie des begehrens.--II. Grundzüge einer ethik.

This paper argues that the question of the compatibility between competition and solidarity needs to be clarified by distinguishing a variety of possible normative frameworks. Using a core metaphor of a race between runners hired by stadiums, I develop and discuss three ethical frameworks: the emergentist perspective, which considers that competition is in itself the locus of solidarity; the social-democratic perspective, which views solidarity as the main counterweight to the abrasive effects of competition – without, however, calling into question the (...) system that generates this competition; and the oppositional perspective, which considers solidarity as an implication of the desire to assist the victims of asymmetrical social power, unfairly distributed through competition, and therefore sees ‘genuine’ solidarity as a means to subvert competitive logic itself. In each case, I deconstruct the fundamental ‘axioms’ that underlie the approach, and I gradually demonstrate why there are compelling ethical arguments for a radical subversion of the logic of competition within a framework of ‘genuine’ solidarity. Thus, while the social-democratic perspective trumps the emergentist perspective, it is in turn trumped by the oppositional perspective. The basic idea is that competition which is statically fair, tends to become dynamically unfair, revealing a deep-lying source of structural alienation. This requires a renewed view of the nature of agents’ rationality, however, and an abandonment of some cherished beliefs and prejudices concerning the alleged fairness of competition in market economies. (shrink)

Originally published as a French edition in 1991, and first translated into English for this Cambridge edition in 2004, in this exhaustive study Christian Bidard develops a theory of prices of production. This theory breaks down the symmetry between producers and consumers and gives more importance to reproduction rather than scarcity. In his analysis of multiple-product systems, Bidard focuses on the notion of an all-engaging system which elucidates the link with von Neumann's theory; examines the notions of sector and (...) vertical integration which make possible an elegant treatment of fixed capital; clarifies the status of the internal rate of return; proposes a general theory of rent. In the discussion of capital theory and marginal equalities or, more specifically, the treatment of exhaustible resources, Bidard compares different readings of Sraffa's work and revisits the question of relationships between classical theory and the general equilibrium theory. (shrink)