This book develops an “idiomatic” foundational theory of the self and its moral obligations. It then employs this theory to answer a variety of questions about legal obligation, political authority, community, and international justice. It argues that we ought to obey a particular community’s laws and government commands, so long as our government restricts itself to protecting classical liberty and individual property rights under the rule of law. It further argues that people today should ideally live in confederated, legally sovereign (...) nation-states or nation-unions. Finally, it suggests that we have greater obligations to our compatriots than we do to foreign citizens, although we will often have pressing moral reasons to obey foreign laws while abroad, grant citizenship to outsiders who wish to join us, and help relieve foreign people’s misery. (shrink)

Kuhn claimed that several algorithms can be defended to select the best theory based on epistemic values such as simplicity, accuracy, and fruitfulness. In a recent paper, Okasha :83–115, 2011) argued that no theory choice algorithm exists which satisfies a set of intuitively compelling conditions that Arrow had proposed for a consistent aggregation of individual preference orderings. In this paper, we put forward a solution to avoid this impossibility result. Based on previous work by Gaertner and Xu, we suggest to (...) view the theory choice problem in a cardinal context and to use a general scoring function defined over a set of qualitative verdicts for every epistemic value. This aggregation method yields a complete and transitive ranking and the rule satisfies all Arrovian conditions appropriately reformulated within a cardinal setting. We also propose methods that capture the aggregation across different scientists. (shrink)

This paper addresses the silence about the Haitian revolution in the oeuvre of Karl Marx. He, who regarded revolutions as “locomotives of world history,” ignored the history of the revolution in Haiti and remained silent about its protagonists. In a brief approach to this paradox, I argue that the main reason for this blank space was Marx’s deficient analysis of contemporary racism. This is made clear in relation to 1) his acceptance of the biological meaning of race, 2) his involvement (...) in two main racisms of the time, antisemitism and colonial racism, and 3) his differentiation and gradation of historical subjects. The consequences were dramatic not because of Marx’s involvement in the racist zeitgeist but insofar as his learning process with regard to the relevance of anti-colonial movements and his awareness of negative societalization as well as its significance were not reflected in a theory of racism. This was to prove a debacle for subsequent attempts at a Marxist analysis of racism and has had effects that are still evident today. (shrink)

Paradigms of anthropology -- Evolution-hominization-anthropology -- Philosophical anthropology -- Anthropology in the historical sciences: historical anthropology -- Cultural anthropology -- Historical cultural anthropology -- Core issues of anthropology -- The body as a challenge -- The mimetic basis of cultural learning -- Theories and practices of the performative -- The rediscovery of rituals -- Language-the antinomy between the universal and the particular -- Images and imagination -- Death and recollection of birth -- Future prospects.

In an article from 1973, Rittel and Webber distinguished between “tame” or “benign” problems on the one hand and “wicked” problems on the other. The authors argued that wicked problems occur in nearly all public policy issues. Since different groups adhere to different value-sets, solutions can only be expressed as better or worse. By no means can they be viewed as definitive or objective. In this paper we shall consider, from this very angle, the theory of social choice which is (...) about the aggregation of individual preferences with the aim to derive a consistent social preference. We shall show that collective choice offers wicked problems of various types which differ in their degree of severity. We shall hereby concentrate on welfare functions and voting schemes of different kinds and shall discuss these in the light of various criteria such as Arrow’s independence condition, Condorcet consistency, monotonicity, manipulability, and other properties. (shrink)

The study examines how multinational organizations implement the concept of ethics and compliance programs into their businesses and the extent to which these programs were geared to the 2004 Amendments. The study explores the applicability of the 2004 Amendments and analyzes the instruments organizations use to successfully develop and maintain these programs. By including research from various fields, a theoretical framework was developed for implementing an ethics and compliance program that takes into account the 2004 Amendments.

Mimesis, the notion that art imitates reality, has long been recognized as one of the central ideas of Western aesthetics and has been most frequently associated with Aristotle. Less well documented is the great importance of mimetic theories of literature, theater, and the visual arts during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In this book, the most comprehensive overview of the theory of mimesis since Auerbach's monumental study, Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf provide a thorough introduction to the complex and (...) shifting meanings of the term. Beginning with the Platonic doctrine of imitation, they chart the concept's appropriation and significance in the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, Molière, Shakespeare, Racine, Diderot, Lessing, and Rousseau. They examine the status of mimesis in the nineteenth-century novel and its reworking by such modern thinkers as Benjamin, Adorno, and Derrida. Widening the traditional understanding of mimesis to encompass the body and cultural practices of everyday life, their work suggests the continuing value of mimetic theory and will prove essential reading for scholars and students of literature, theater, and the visual arts. (shrink)

Wulf Gaertner provides a comprehensive account of an important and complex issue within social choice theory: how to establish a social welfare function while restricting the spectrum of individual preferences in a sensible way. Gaertner's starting point is K. J. Arrow's famous 'Impossibility Theorem', which showed that no welfare function could exist if an unrestricted domain of preferences is to be satisfied together with some other appealing conditions. A number of leading economists have tried to provide avenues out of (...) this 'impossibility' by restricting the variety of preferences: here, Gaertner provides a clear and detailed account, using standardized mathematical notation, of well over forty theorems associated with domain conditions. Domain Conditions in Social Choice Theory will be an essential addition to the library of social choice theory for scholars and their advanced graduate students. (shrink)

We introduce a new theorem in social choice theory built on a path integral approach which will show that, under some reasonable conditions, there is a unique way to aggregate individual preferences based on fuzzy sets into a social preference based on probabilities, and that this way is invariant under any permutation of alternatives. We then apply this theorem to the case of democratic decision making with data of the behaviour and voting preferences of voting agents and show that there (...) is a tradeoff between fairness and efficiency and that no voting system can achieve both simultaneously. (shrink)

(2003). Perfecting the Individual: Wilhelm von Humboldt's concept of anthropology, Bildung and mimesis. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 241-249.

The ArgumentPain has important biomedical socioanthropological, semiotic, and other facets. In this contribution pain and the experssion of pain are looked at from the perspective of evolutionary biology, utilizing, among others, cross-cultural data from field work in Melanesia.No other being cares for sick and suffering conspecifics in the way humans do. Notwithstanding aggression and neglect, common in all cultures, human societies can be characterized as empathic, comforting, and promoting the health and well-being of their members. One important stimulus triggering this (...) caring response in others is the expression of pain. The nonverbal channel of communication, particularly certain universal — i.e., culture-independent facial expressions, gestures, and body postures, convey much of the message from the painstricken person to the group.These behaviors signal the person's physical and psychical pain, sadness, grief, and despair in ways very similar to the signs given by infants and small children: the body loses tonus and sinks or drops to the ground, the gestures are those of helplessness. Pain and grief may be so strong that control is lost not only over the body's posture but also over the mind's awareness. In such cases the afflicted person may carry out actions endangering himself or others. In general, these behavior patterns resemble those of infants in situations of distress and danger, and it is not surprising that the response of the members of the group is basically parental: taking care, assisting and consoling.Perceptive and behavioral patterns which developed in the course of avian and mammalian phylogeny to serve the well-being of the young have proven, as was shown by Eibl-Eibesfeldt, to be powerful building blocks for actions in other spheres of human interaction. Love is one such field, the reactions to a conspecific suffering pain is another. (shrink)

As a young scholar, Eric Voegelin wanted to prove whether the ‘race idea’ could function as a means of political integration. He published two books on race that, after his flight to the USA, were eventually passed off as an early critique of racism. This is a complete misinterpretation and inversion of his endeavor. In his tracts, Voegelin only criticized a certain direction of race thinking that he identified as a materialistic biological approach to the problem. At the same time, (...) he advocated another spiritual and metaphysical attempt, represented by the examples of Carl Gustav Carus, Othmar Spann, and Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß. Both versions of race thinking were abundant in different types of fascism and also in Nazi Germany. That is why Voegelin could publish his books in Germany—and one of them even at the recommendation of a Nazi philosopher, with a publisher close to völkisch and fascist ideology. The revaluation of his racist texts was only possible on the basis of their affirmative or superficial and uncritical reading against the backdrop of the development of a one-dimensional conception of racism. (shrink)

De christelijke ethiek is een ethiek in wording. Dit tweede deel van het 'Handboek Moraaltheologie' legt aan de hand van de trefwoorden wetten, waarheid en waardigheid uit hoe de morele denkpatronen zich in de tijd hebben ontwikkeld. (Kerk)historische en dogmatische veranderingen hadden een belangrijke invloed op de moraaltheologie. Niet alleen de inhouden, maar ook methoden veranderden door de eeuwen heen: bij de eerste christenen leidde een oorspronkelijke overtuiging tot een overtuigende ethiek. In de Middeleeuwen droeg een systematisering van de theologische (...) waarheid bij aan een systematisering van morele normen en wetten. In de moderne en postmoderne tijd wordt naarmate het waarheidsbegrip in de wijsgerige ethiek verdwijnt, de morele leer aan de orde gesteld. Dit boek brengt fenomenologie, antropologie en theologie met elkaar in gesprek: eidetische fenomenologie en een existentiële antropologie dragen bij aan een mogelijke vertaalslag van geopenbaarde inhouden. (shrink)

This introductory text explores the theory of social choice. Written as a primer suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduates, this text will act as an important starting point for students grappling with the complexities of social choice theory. Rigorous yet accessible, this primer avoids the use of technical language and provides an up-to-date discussion of this rapidly developing field. This is the first in a series of texts published in association with the LSE.

Bei der Studie handelt es sich um eine Paragraphen fur Paragraphen erlauternde Interpretation der "Philosophischen Untersuchungen." Sie wendet sich an alle an Wittgensteins Philosophie Interessierte, insbesondere an Studierende und Schuler. Inhaltlich setzt sie einen Schwerpunkt auf die Sprachphilosophie. Didaktisch versucht sie, den Text Schritt fur Schritt verstandlich zu machen, und Wittgensteins - oft implizit bleibende - Auseinandersetzungen mit anderen philosophischen Positionen (der philosophischen Tradition und der analytischen Sprachphilosophie) deutlicher hervortreten zu lassen. Daher finden sich in der Studie weitergehende Erlauterungen, die (...) einige bedeutsame philosophiekritische Konsequenzen der "Philosophischen Untersuchungen" herausstellen. Abgeschlossen wird der Text durch eine Zusammenfassung und eine Gegenuberstellung der Wittgensteinschen Sprachphilosophie mit bedeutsamen Konzeptionen anderer sprachanalytischer Philosophen.". (shrink)

“The pedagogical aim which we have before us in this little book forces us to limit ourselves to the consideration of the great and central doctrines of Thomism, and to leave aside the innumerable applications of those doctrines which may be found scattered up and down the extensive works of Thomas Aquinas”.