"Raymond Geuss is a major voice in contemporary philosophy, and this book will enhance his stature even further. Containing some of his best pieces so far, "Outside Ethics" reveals his impressive range as well as the depth of his thought.

Society is at a crossroads. Interconnected systems, radical transparency, and rapidly increasing sophistication in skills, communications, and technologies provide a unique context for fostering social innovation at a planetary scale. We argue that unprecedented rates of systemic social change are possible for co-creating a future where humans and all life can thrive. Yet, this requires innovation in the conceptions, practice, teaching, and researching of social innovation itself to reimagine what it is and can be. As a multidisciplinary group of academics, (...) practitioners, and educators, we integrate our perspectives on social innovation and humanistic management to suggest the notion of systemic social innovation. We introduce the concept of “transformative collaboration” as central to facilitating systemic social innovation and propose a multilevel model for accelerating systems change. We then develop an integrated framework for conceptualizing systemic social innovation. Four levels of social impact are identified, and these levels are bracketed with a call for transforming individual consciousness at the micro level and new collective mindsets at the macro level. Blooom is presented as a case study to illustrate transformative collaboration, demonstrate the role of mindset shift in practice, and introduce four key ingredients to systemic social innovation. Finally, a call to action is issued for social innovation practice, teaching, and research. Most importantly, we seek to inspire and accelerate systemic social innovation that enables the flourishing of every human being and all life on earth. (shrink)

Issues of interest, identity and values intertwine in environmental conflicts, creating challenges that cannot generally be overcome using rationalities grounded in generalised argumentation and abstraction. To address the growing need to engage interests and identities along with plural values in the conservation of biodiversity and ecological systems, we introduce the concept of ‘appropriateness of actions’ and ground it in a relational understanding of environmental ethics. A determination of appropriateness for actions comes from combining outputs from value elicitation with those of (...) interest and identity negotiation in ways that are salient to specific people and their relationships to specific places. Drawing on the Blue Mountain Forest Partnership in the Pacific Northwest, we propose factors of success for supporting appropriate actions: 1) understanding context and identifying key stakeholders; 2) surfacing a diversity of interests and building system-level trust; 3) building empathy for different identities grounded in specific places; 4) eliciting diverse values and seeking to understand their links to worldviews and knowledge systems and; 5) seeking out appropriate actions. (shrink)

In his response to my article, “Historicism and Science: Thoughts on Quine” , Paul Bernays distinguishes between two aspects of the article: my criticism of Quine's theory of knowledge and my contention that the epistemological foundations of modern science lead to historicism. Bernays substantially accepts my criticism of Quine, particularly insofar as I reject Quine's behaviorism and “physicalism”. He opposes, however, my claim that historicism is implicit in the presuppositions of modern science. I argued that the historicism inherent in modern (...) science is due to the essentially changeable character of modern science. Quine's theory of knowledge tacitly takes account of this changeable character a) through his view of sense experience as being constituted by posits, b) through his recognition that individual scientific statements are dependent upon a broad linguistic‐conceptual framework that is itself subject to change, and c) through his pragmatic conception of reason and the concomitant emphasis upon the criterion of simplicity. (shrink)

Raymond Geuss has been a distinctive contributor to the analysis and evaluation of German philosophy and to recent debates in ethics. In this new collection he treats a variety of topics in ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history with special reference to the work of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Adorno. Two of the essays in the volume deal with central aspects of the philosophy of Nietzsche. The collection also contains an essay on the history of conceptions of 'culture' and (...) one on the ethics of Ernst Tugendhat. The remaining three essays focus on questions in aesthetics. The volume will be of interest to students of modern philosophy, German intellectual and cultural history, and literary theory. (shrink)

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture, A monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics--insofar as it is a virtue ethics--forms individual character so that a person not only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover, possesses the (...) integration of character to be able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices, A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to freedom and equality for all. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Retaking College Hill: The Adults Are Back, Walter Donway takes us on a tour of a university that has been consumed by low standards and cancel culture. The dean is attempting to protect the university’s standards but is being opposed at every turn, and there is a plot to fi re him. A small group of his supporters try to help him. They face opposition of multiple types, including violence, each step of the way and must skillfully manage (...) the situation. This is a novel of ideas—showing us how philosophy got the university into this mess, and how clear thinking and powerful ideas—such as those of Ayn Rand—can help reverse the trend. (shrink)

(1989). BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER: DON'T FORSAKE THE FAMILY JEWELS. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 265-280. doi: 10.1080/05568648909506323.

This essay argues that the economic failure of neo-liberalism should be seen as demonstrating in a particularly striking way that the way of forming preferences is an inherently political process, which needs to be controlled by agencies that stand outside the economic process . A number of concepts that have played an important role in recent economic and political theory, such as ‘freedom’, ‘welfare’ and ‘neutrality’, need to be very seriously re-examined. Furthermore it is argued that giving up the idea (...) that there can be a fully free-standing, autonomous ‘economic’ theory is fully compatible with accepting that efficiency, parsimony, and the satisfaction of needs are important human values, which need to be socially institutionalized. (shrink)

Grounded in Bandura’s social cognitive theory of moral thought and action, we develop a conceptual model linking supervisors’ perceptions of organizational injustice and abusive supervision with moral disengagement mechanisms acting as the underlying process. Specifically, we elaborate why and how supervisors’ experiences of each type of injustice would trigger their adoption of distinctive moral disengagement mechanisms, which in turn lead to their abusive supervisory conduct. The present conceptual model sheds new light on linking organizational injustice to abusive supervision from a (...) moral perspective. In addition, it also provides important theoretical and managerial implications to our current understanding of why and how abusive supervision happens. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary framework for bringing humanistic management and service research together contained in “Humanistic Management of Social Innovation in Service : An Interdisciplinary Framework” is analyzed in this commentary. The humanistic management framework for social innovation in service that the authors propose is quite invigorating. The authors identify many new future service research opportunities.