This article contributes to the development of a professional responsibility theory of public relations ethics. Toward that end, we examine the roles of a public relations practitioner as a professional, an institutional advocate, and the public conscience of institutions served. In the article, we review previously suggested theories of public relations ethics and propose a new theory based on the public relations professional's dual obligations to serve client organizations and the public interest.

En 1789, la convocatoria de los Estados Generales despertó el entusiasmo del pueblo al convertir las “comunas” en el lugar de ejercicio de su soberanía, vinculándolo al sistema electoral de los agentes de confianza revocables. En 1793-1794, la guerra civil, liderada por la aristocracia de los ricos contra la cultura política popular, no pudo impedir ni la redistribución de tierras ni el programa de economía política popular. La República montagnarde de 1794, a pesar de su brevedad, aprobó una constitución comunal (...) basada en las relaciones de confianza entre el pueblo y sus mandatarios, que ha sido imposible olvidar. 1789, the Convocation of the Etats-generaux created a popular enthusiasm who transformed the communes in the place of the exercise of his sovereignty, bound with the electoral system of removable trustee. The civil war, leaded by the wealthy aristocracy against the popular political culture, was not able to prevent neither the redistribution of land property, nor the popular political economy programme, in 1793-94. The Montagnarde Commonwealth of 1794, however brief was its term, experimented a communal constitution, founded on trusteeship between the people and his mandatories, which will be never forgotten. (shrink)

Law is the expression of public reason. I want to explicate and justify this assertion, which lies at the core of a normative theory of law. Primarily, I want to focus on the concept of public reason, showing what it is, relating it to private or individual reason, and finding its rationale in that relation. I shall then argue that public reason exhausts the normative space where law may be found. Appealing to public reason, I shall show that the authority (...) that law claims over the judgments and actions of citizens must ultimately be grounded in their own rationality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Artificial Virtues and the Sensible Knave1 David Gauthier Hume's account in the Treatise ofthe artificial virtues, their obligation and motivation, resists easy interpretation. Two passages, taken from his discussion of promises, will introduce, the problems I propose to examine. First: No action can be requir'd of us as our duty, unless there be implanted in human nature some actuating passion or motive, capable of producing the action. This (...) motive cannot be the sense of duty. A sense of duty supposes an antecedent obligation: And where an action is not requir'd by any natural passion, it cannot be requir'd by any natural obligation; since it may be omitted without proving any defect or imperfection in the mind and temper, and consequently without any vice. Now 'tis evident we have no motive leading us to the performance of promises, distinct from a sense of duty. If we thought, that promises had no moral obligation, we never shou'd feel any inclination to observe them.... But as there is naturally no inclination to observe promises, distinct from a sense of their obligation; it follows, that fidelity is no natural virtue, and that promises have no force, antecedent to human conventions.2 Ignore for the present the last sentence quoted. Hume seems clearly to be claiming that (1) an action can be a duty only if there is some motive to perform it other than a sense of duty, and (2) there is no motive to perform an act of promise-keeping other than a sense of duty. From (1) and (2) we may infer that (3) an act of promise-keeping can not be a duty. But since the sense of duty motivates an action only ifit is apprehended to be a duty, then from (2) and (3) we may conclude that (4) there is no motive to perform an act of promise-keeping that does not involve the mistaken apprehension that it is a duty. And the second passage: Afterwards a sentiment of morals concurs with interest, and becomes a new obligation upon mankind.... The difficulties, Volume XVIII Number 2 401 DAVID GAUTHIER that occur to us, in supposing a moral obligation to attend promises, we either surmount or elude. For instance; the expression of a resolution is not commonly suppos'd to be obligatory; and we cannot readily conceive how the making use of a certain form of words shou'd be able to cause any material difference. Here, therefore, we feign a new act ofthe mind, which we call the willing an obligation; and on this we suppose the morality to depend. But we have prov'd already, that there is no such act of the mind, and consequently that promises impose no natural obligation. (T 523) This time, ignore for the present the first sentence. The remainder would seem to confirm my reading ofthe first passage. Hume claims that (5) there is no natural obligation to perform an act of promise-keeping, but (6) we feign the willing of such an obligation. If, as Hume has claimed in the previous passage, (2) there is no motivation to perform an act ofpromise-keeping other than a sense ofduty, and if obligation and duty may be taken as equivalent, then we may conclude as before that (4) there is no motive to perform an act of promise-keeping that does not involve the mistaken apprehension that it is a duty. In his theory of the artificial virtues and vices, Hume considers "the three fundamental laws ofnature, thatofthestabilityofpossession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises" (T 526). It would seem, from the passages cited, that Hume must suppose that there is no real obligation to keep promises, but only a feigned obligation. And since the reasoning that Hume employs in the first ofthe passages that I have cited is explicitly identified with "that reasoning, which prov'd justice in general to be an artificial virtue" (T 518), it seems clear that he must also suppose that there is no real obligation to uphold stability of possession and its transference by consent—no real obligation to observe the other laws of justice or equity.3... (shrink)

While popular cultural representations portray the “new father” of the past two decades as more involved, more nurturing, and capable of coparenting, many argue that actual fathering conduct has not kept pace. Others, however, question the extent to which the culture of fatherhood does indeed support involved fathering and, if so, what this involvement entails. This study aims to contribute to the exploration of the culture of fatherhood through an analysis of a yearlong Canadian newspaper series dedicated to family issues. (...) Findings suggest that through representations of parental guilt, parental responsibility, work—family balance issues, and hegemonic masculinity, mothers continue to be positioned as primary parents. Support for father involvement, to the extent that it exists, occurs within the framework of fathers as part-time, secondary parents whose relationship with children remains less important than mothers'. (shrink)

The rationality of means-end reasoning is the bedrock of the Humean account of practical reasons. But the normativity of such reasoning can not be taken for granted. I consider and reject the idea that the normativity of instrumental reasoning can be explained – either in terms of its being constitutive of the very notion of having an end, or solely in terms of instrumental considerations. I argue that the instrumental principle is itself a brute norm, and that this is consistent (...) with a Humean account of practical reasons. (shrink)

Are Hobbes's laws of nature to be understood primarily as theorems of reason, or as commands of God, or as commands of the civil sovereign? Each of these accounts can be given textual support; each identifies a role that the laws may be thought to play. Examining the full range of textual references, discussing the place of the laws of nature in Hobbes's argument, and considering how the laws may be known, give strongest support to the first of the three (...) accounts, that the laws are primarily rational precepts and only secondarily civil and divine commands. (shrink)

Rousseau is often portrayed as an educational and social reformer whose aim was to increase individual freedom. In this volume David Gauthier examines Rousseau's evolving notion of freedom, where he focuses on a single quest: can freedom and the independent self be regained? Rousseau's first answer is given in Emile, where he seeks to create a self-sufficient individual, neither materially nor psychologically enslaved to others. His second is in the Social Contract, where he seeks to create a citizen who (...) identifies totally with his community, experiencing his dependence on it only as a dependence on himself. Rousseau implicitly recognized the failure of these solutions. His third answer is one of the main themes of the Confessions and Reveries, where he is made for a love that merges the selves of the lovers into a single, psychologically sufficient unity that makes each 'better than free'. But is this response a chimaera? (shrink)

This essay proposes several guiding parameters for ecofeminism's development as a moral theory. I argue that these provide necessary directives and contexts for ecofeminist analyses and social/ecological projects. In the past these have been very diverse and occasionally contradictory. Most important to the core of ecofeminism's vitality are close links between theory and political activism. I show how these originated in ecofeminism's history and advocate a continued participatory and activist focus in the future.

Securing the internet has arguably become paradigmatic for modern security practice, not only because modern life is considered to be impossible or valueless if disconnected, but also because emergent cyber-relations and their complex interconnections are refashioning traditional security logics. This paper analyses European modes of governing geared toward securing vital, emergent cyber-systems in the face of the interconnected emergency. It develops the concept of ‘bureaucratic vitalism’ to get at the tension between the hierarchical organization and reductive knowledge frames of security (...) apparatuses on the one hand, and the increasing desire for building ‘resilient’, dispersed, and flexible security assemblages on the other. The bureaucratic/vital juxtaposition seeks to capture the way in which cybersecurity governance takes emergent, complex systems as object and model without fully replicating this ideal in practice. Thus, we are concerned with the question of what happens when security apparatuses appropriate and translate vitalist concepts into practice. Our case renders visible the banal bureaucratic manoeuvres that seek to operate upon security emergencies by fostering connectivities, producing agencies, and staging exercises. (shrink)

In this paper, I invoke various matterings of felt in order to generate a practice of writing that engenders bodily difference that is affective, moving, and wooly. In attending to ‘how to write as felt,’ as a touching encounter, I consider how human and nonhuman matter composes. This co-mingling that felt performs enacts what Alaimo calls transcorporeality. Connecting felt with theories of touch and transcorporeality becomes a way to open up and re-configure different bodily imaginaries, both human and nonhuman, that (...) are radically immanent and intensive; as an assemblage of forces and flows that open bodies to helices and trans connections :27–58, 2017b). My contribution to this collection on ‘humanity in a posthuman age’ is experimental and performative. Felt is activated not as a metaphor but rather poses questions about what writing does at the interstices between research and creation. (shrink)

Hobbes on Demonstration and Construction DAVID GAUTHIER 1~ IN 1656 Hobbes published Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics, with an Epistle Dedicatory to the Marquis of Dorchester, Lord Pierrepont. In this Epistle, Hobbes distinguishes the demonstrable from the indemonstrable arts: "demonstrable are those the construction of the subject whereof is in the power of the artist himself, who, in his demonstration, does no more but deduce the consequences of his own operation" . Although this passage, with the explication (...) Hobbes offers for it and the consequences he draws from it, and a similar discussion in De homine, published two years later, have not been unnoticed, their significance for Hobbes's account of science in general, and civil philosophy or politics in particular, has not, I think, been I am grateful to the University of East Anglia for appointing me a Visiting Research Fellow during the period in which the first draft of this paper was written. A second draft was presented at the Third Quadrennial International Fellows Conference of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, sponsored by the Florence Center for the History and Philosophy of Science. I am grateful for the remarks of my commentator, J. E. McGuire, and for the discussion. I am also grateful for the comments of the two referees who read this paper for the Journal of the History of Philosophy. References to Hobbes's works appear as.. (shrink)

1. The portrait and the man – each is unique. “Here is the only portrait of a man, painted exactly from nature and completely true to it.” And this man, “it will be myself…. Myself alone…. I am different.” And yet this unique portrait of this unique man, “may be used as the first comparative work in the study of man, which is certainly yet to be begun.”.

In this article I provide an overview of philosophical conceptions of privacy and suggest 3 models to assist with the ethical analysis of privacy invasion by the news media. The models are framed by respect for persons, the comparison of harms and benefits, and the transfer of power. After describing the models, I demonstrate how they can be applied to news reporting that invades the privacy of public figures.

Bringing together such thinkers as Ulrich Beck, Bruno Latour, Michael Redclift and Ted Benton, this important book discusses critical themes in the development ...

Ce compte rendu a déjà paru dans les Archives de sciences sociales des religions 164 | 2013. Nous remercions beaucoup François Gauthier et les ASSR de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. G. Bordin, On dansait seulement la nuit. Fêtes chez les Inuit du nord de la Terre de Baffin, Nanterre, Publications de la Société d'ethnologie, coll. « Anthropologie de la nuit », 2011, 116 p. Ce beau petit livre publié par la Société d'ethnologie de Nanterre s'inscrit dans (...) la collection « Anthropologie de la (...) - Recensions. (shrink)

This book presents a selection of David Gauthier's writings on Thomas Hobbes and the theory of political contractarianism. The essays cover topics including Hobbes on law, social contract theory, and public reason.

In this chapter, we turn to cooperation as the remedy for market failure, and to justice as the rational disposition to cooperative behaviour. Instead of each person choosing her own strategy, in cooperation persons agree on a single joint strategy choice leading to an optimal outcome. We argue that such a choice results from an ideal bargain among all persons, and offer an account of bargaining, in terms of the initial bargaining position, the claims rational persons would make from that (...) position, and the concessions they would then offer to achieve agreement on a joint strategy, yielding a fundamental principle labelled ‘minimax relative concession’. We then show that this principle is equivalent to ‘maximin relative benefit’, in which the smallest gain anyone receives, measured as a proportion of the gain he would receive from being granted his claim, is as great as possible. The principle of maximin relative benefit, we claim, captures the idea of impartiality in the distribution of the benefits of cooperation, and so is a principle of fairness or justice. Thus, rational bargaining and justice coincide. But we note that the question of determining the initial bargaining position remains to be resolved, both rationally and morally; this question is in fact the same as that of determining initial factor endowments, which we raised and deferred in the previous chapter. (shrink)

The author has endeavoured to define two main trends in the research on the foundations of mathematics, constructivism and structuralism. He gives many examples in axiomatic set theory, e.g. the continuum hypothesis, and in intuitionism, e.g. the notion of choice sequence, in order to show that the two approaches are complementary. The paper contains some original ideas, concerning the structure of the continuum and the constructive horizon, and is completed by an appendix. The paper is an attempt at the justification (...) of a constructivist philosophy in the making. (shrink)

C'est un thème husserlien que je veux traiter dans mon exposé, un thème qui relève de la philosophie husserlienne de la logique. Celui de la «Mannigfaltigkeitslehre» ou doctrine de la multiplicité. J'exposerai brièvement ce thème et j'essaierai ensuite d'en donner une version moderne qui soit à la fois une critique et un renouvellement des intentions de Husserl.

Le terme de moment est omniprésent dans l’œuvre de Hegel et les commentateurs n’ont pas suffisamment insisté sur le sens dynamique du « Moment » hégélien qui n’a rien de temporel, mais dénote plutôt le momentum ou moment cinétique de la mécanique newtonienne. Hegel a donné vie à ce concept de moment et en a fait le moteur de sa dialectique qu’on interprète ici comme une syllogistique dynamique de la sursomption des moments du procès de la conscience et du devenir (...) de l’esprit. Une logique dynamique pourrait récupérer avantageusement cette dialectique des concepts. Mais la lecture critique de Hegel veut montrer comment un concept physique est transformé en notion métaphysique et comment une science de la logique « Wissenschaft der Logik » est dévoyée dans une ontologie où c’est une philosophie de la nature qui devient mécanique en assujettissant la physique à un idéalisme objectif supraphysique. Un épilogue sur le vocabulaire hégélien termine l’article. (shrink)

Presents an overview of the book, introducing the problem of showing the rationality of moral constraints, and the conception of rationality as maximization, which on the face of it seems incompatible with any form of constraint. We argue, however, that moral theory is part of the theory of rational choice, arising from the structure of interaction, in which persons recognize a role for agreed mutual constraint in bringing about fair mutual advantage. We contrast the maximizing conception of rationality with the (...) universalistic conception accepted by many philosophers, and our appeal to rational choice with the quite different appeals proposed by John Harsanyi and John Rawls. We introduce five key conceptions central to our theory: the idea of a morally free zone, the principle of minimax relative concession as the basis of justice, constrained maximization, the proviso, and the Archimedean point from which an individual can move the moral world. Finally, we raise questions about the scope of moral relationships and their place in an ideal human life. (shrink)

Die Arbeit schlägt eine beweistheoretische Analyse der mathematischen Physik im Gegensatz zu gegenwärtigen modelltheoretischen Ansätzen vor. Über eine oberflächliche Analogie hinaus haben beweistheoretische Techniken und Renormalisationsverfahren ein gemeinsames Ziel: die Ausschaltung von Unendlichkeiten in einer konsistenten Theorie. Die Geschichte der Renormalisation in Quantenfeldtheorien wird kurz skizziert und eine allgemeine These über die Natur und Justizfizierung von Theorien in der mathematischen Physik vorgeschlagen. Wir schließen mit den Grundlinien für ein Forschungsprogramm für eine physikalische Logik.

Economics celebrates an ideal of interaction free from all constraint, an ideal found in the perfectly competitive market, where equilibrium and optimality coincide. Morality can then be thought of as arising from market failure; the perfect market itself operates as a morally free zone, because the only behaviour it makes possible excludes those features of natural interaction that prevent individuals, each acting to maximize his own utility, from achieving optimality. We examine the conditions for market success—individual factor endowments, free individual (...) activity, private goods, mutual unconcern, and the absence of all externalities—showing that these extend the freedom of the solitary individual to the context of interaction, and exclude all free‐riding, parasitism, and any form of partiality. But we note that the initial factor endowment of each person, taken as a given in market interaction, is itself subject to rational and moral scrutiny. The chapter concludes with a discussion of utilitarian and Marxist objections to the market, both of which we reject. (shrink)

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 90-94.