Tacitus is an unlikely source for our study of Brutus, Cassius, and Cato, as they stand outside the chronological framework of Tacitus’ writings; nonetheless, they do appear a number of times throughout his works, and Tacitus portrays them with nuance and significance. As Brutus, Cassius, and Cato are rarely the precise focus for Tacitus, they are often referred to obliquely or in dialogue or speeches typically regarding treason and liberty. This paper will explore Tacitus’ depiction of Brutus, Cassius, and Cato (...) in his major and minor works, including the oblique references to Cato, Brutus as an orator and writer, Brutus and Cassius as commanders in civil war, and lastly their memory as it pertains to liberty and treason. Tacitus’ contribution to our understanding of Brutus, Cassius, and Cato comes from both his own use of them as markers of political memory and liberty and his examination of how others used Brutus, Cassius, and Cato to make arguments for political liberty or for the basis of accusations of treason. (shrink)

Back to Kant is a study of the rise of the neo-Kantian movement from its origins in the 1850s to its academic preeminence in the years before World War I. Thomas E. Willey describes early neo-Kantianism as a reaction of scientists and scientific philosophers against both the then discredited Hegelianism and Naturphilosophie of the preceding era and the simplistic and deterministic scientific materialism of the 1850s. "Back to Kant" was the slogan of a revolt against theories of knowledge which (...) seemed inadequate to recent discoveries in thermodynamics, physiology, optics and other fields. Because Immanuel Kant was the philosopher who placed Newtonian physics on new epistemological foundations and demonstrated the possibility of universal scientific truth, he was the right thinker for a generation of scholars living through a new scientific revolution in Germany and dissatisfied with both speculative idealism and crude materialism. The second wave of neo-Kantians continued to discuss problems of scientific epistemology in the 1880s and after, but they also showed a keen interest in political and social matters, attempting to bridge liberalism and socialism with Kantian ethics. Neo-Kantians had to face questions of socialism, the place of the working class in society, the phenomenon of social welfare, the challenge of political democracy. Willey uses the biographical approach to develop the relationship between unity and diversity in the movement, and to underscore the importance of personality in history. While individual dissertations and monographs have been written on various thinkers and schools within neo-Kantianism, this is the first wide-ranging history of the entire phenomenon. Willey observes that the movement did succeed in reasserting ethical values and in separating humanistic studies from the methods of physical science. He also discusses the possibility that a wider acceptance of neo-Kantian ideals among bourgeois intellectuals and socialist leaders might have reduced class antagonisms and sustained a stronger feeling of community between Germany and the West. (shrink)

The Image of the Unseen God develops a novel understanding of God and God's action compatible with the teachings of Jesus, the Christian tradition, and contemporary science.

There are many ways of writing about the moral life, but at first sight few seem more formal and apparently remote from its urgent, anguishing problems than ...

This is followed by a section about action in general: it establishes the standpoint of the agent and makes an inventory of several species of action.

Bezugnehmend auf Kants Moralphilosophie entwickelt dieser Beitrag eine These dazu, was mit der Forderung gemeint sein soll, Personen unter Beachtung ihrer Würde bzw. als "Zweck an sich selbst" zu behandeln. Es wird vorgeschlagen, die Implikationen von Kants "Menschheitsformel" als ein Bündel von mit einander verwandten Vorschriften zu interpretieren, die das moralische Nachdenken darüber, wie die Prinzipien unserer tagtäglichen Entscheidungen spezifiziert und interpretiert werden sollten, leiten und begrenzen können. Der Beitrag bearbeitet sodann die folgenden drei Fragestellungen: Was folgt aus dem Vorangehenden (...) im Hinblick auf die Behandlung von Straftätern bei der Verbüßung ihrer Strafe? Was empfiehlt die "Menschheitsformel" - einmal abgesehen von Kants "offizieller" Straftheorie - im Hinblick darauf, wer, wie stark, in welcher Weise und warum bestraft werden sollte? Gibt es Konflikte zwischen diesen Empfehlungen und Kants "offizieller" Straftheorie, die eine Revision seiner Gründe für diese Theorie erforderlich machen? Drawing from Kant's moral theory, this essay develops an account of what is required to treat persons with dignity, or as "ends in themselves". It proposes to regard the implications of Kant's humanity formula as a cluster of related precepts that can guide and constrain moral deliberation about how to specify and interpret the principles that should guide day to day decisions. The essay then addresses three questions: What is implied regarding how offenders should be treated while undergoing punishment? Apart from Kant's official theory of punishment, what would the humanity formula recommend regarding who should be punished, how much, in what way, and why? Are there conflicts between these recommendations and Kant's official theory of punishment that invite reexamination of his grounds for his official theory? (shrink)

Since ancient times the practices and ethics of bankers and banking in general have undergone a great deal of criticism. While lending is motivated by profit, and while households are not explicitly coerced into borrowing money, the justice of a system which exploits workers and at the same time encourages them to borrow money in order to maintain a certain standard of living can be viewed as sometimes unfair and perhaps immoral. The value of goods, according to St. Thomas (...) Aquinas and Karl Marx, should mostly reflect the value of labor embodied in them, and for that reason, labor should be compensated fully for its work. For these reasons, Aquinas and Marxian economists offer somewhat similar and at the same time different views on both the labor theory of value as well as on the morality of certain banking practices. If credit and the banking system also bring about crisis and the greater concentration and centralization of capital, then the morality of these outcomes also needs to be examined. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume describe a range of programs that use picture books to teach philosophy to diverse audiences. From a pre-school program in which college students to do the teaching to a program focused on overcoming the legacy of violence and genocide in Mali in which the teachers write and illustrate their own picture books, the authors demonstrate the impact that learning philosophy has on diverse communities of young students and their teachers.

James Fitzjames Stephen is remembered as a judge, legal historian, and the author of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, a reply to J. S. Mill's late works. He is less well remembered for his journalism, though it earned him a reputation among his contemporaries as one of the most trenchant writers on topics ranging across the social, religious, political, moral, and philosophical questions debated in his time. It was largely in his journalistic writing that Stephen set forth his views on these questions. (...) Despite such a reputation, however, only a small proportion of this writing was collected during his lifetime, and very little has been republished since his death.Selected Writings of James Fitzjames Stephen: On Society, Religion, and Government includes thirty-five essays expressing Stephen's views on the questions of his day, which have not lost their interest in ours. He wrote at a time when much of the finest writing in English was published in periodicals, often anonymously. The essays in this volume are drawn mostly from Stephen's unsigned contributions to the Saturday Review, with additions, both signed and unsigned, from other periodicals, extending from the 1850s to the 1880s. (shrink)

The term “globalization” was popularized by Marshall McLuhan in War and Peace in the Global Village. In the book, McLuhan described how the global media shaped current events surrounding the Vietnam War [1] and also predicted how modern information and communication technologies would accelerate world progress through trade and knowledge development. Globalization now refers to a broad range of issues regarding the movement of goods and services through trade liberalization, and the movement of people through migration. Much has also been (...) written on the global effects of environmental degradation, population growth, and economic disparities. In addition, the pace of scientific development has accelerated, with both negative and positive implications for global health. Concerns for national health transcend borders, with a need for shared human security and an enhanced role for international cooperation and development [2]. These issues have significant bioethical implications, and thus a renewed academic focus on the ethical dimensions of public health is needed. Future developments in science and health policy also require a firm grounding in bioethical principles. These core principles include beneficence; nonmaleficence ; respect for persons and human dignity ; and attention to equity and social justice. According to the World Health Organization [3], global ethical approaches should monitor and update ethical norms for research, as necessary; anticipate ethical implications of advances in science and technology for health; apply internationally accepted codes of ethics; ensure that agreed standards guide future work on the human genome; and ensure that quality in health systems and services is assessed and promoted. (shrink)

“Supererogation” is now a technical term in philosophy for a range of ideas expressed by terms such as “good but not required,” “beyond the call of duty,” “praiseworthy but not obligatory,” and “good to do but not bad not to do” (see Duty and Obligation; Intrinsic Value). Examples often cited are extremely generous acts of charity, heroic self-sacrifice, extraordinary service to morally worthy causes, and sometimes forgiveness and minor favors. These concepts are familiar in institutional contexts, for example, when teachers (...) give points for “extra credit” work, corporations give “bonuses” for profitable leadership, and armies award medals for extraordinary service and valor. Moral philosophers, however, have generally focused on whether or not some of these terms refer to a fundamental moral category and, if so, how the category should be defined, which acts the category includes, and whether various moral theories adequately acknowledge it. The idea that acts can be good and praiseworthy but beyond duty has seemed puzzling for several reasons. For example, it seems that “good and praiseworthy” appeals to scalar standards of (“more or less”) value and virtue whereas “duty,” “required,” and “obligatory” invoke nonscalar norms that make (“all or nothing”) demands. This raises the theoretical question whether morality presupposes two distinct conceptual schemes, and, if so, to what extent and how these can be unified in a consistent and coherent moral theory. (shrink)

Kant is often regarded as an extreme retributivist, but recently commentators emphasize the importance of deterrence in Kant's basic justification of punishment. Kant's combination of deterrence and retributive elements, however, must be distinguished from others that are less plausible. To interpret Kant as merely adding retributive side-constraints to a basic deterrence aim fails to capture fully the retributive strain in Kant's thought. The basic questions are: who should be punished, how much, in what manner, and why? Kant held that all (...) and only the legally guilty ought to be punished, the legally guilty being also morally guilty, except when the legal requirement was to do something "immoral in itself." This case aside, violations of law also transgress an ethical duty to obey the law. Criminal punishments should be designed to match victims' empirically discernable losses in degree and kind, except when this would be impossible or degrading; courts cannot measure the ultimate moral desert of criminals, which depends on their inner "will." "Punishment" is not a mere disincentive in a "price" system of social control; it has an inherent expressive function, conveying a public message of moral disapproval of the criminal conduct in question. Understanding this together with Kant's basic theory of justice may help to explain his acceptance of ius talionis and condemnation of making exceptions for pragmatic reasons. It also accounts for the retributive "tone" of Kant's remarks, despite his insistence that public courts deal only with "external actions," not overall moral worth and character assessment. Kant wird oft als Vertreter einer extremen Vergeltungstheorie gesehen. Auf der anderen Seite betonen verschiedene Autoren in der letzten Zeit die Abschreckung als grundlegendes Element in Kants Rechtfertigung der Strafe. Ihnen gegenüber muß Kants Verknüpfung von Vergeltung und Abschreckung von anderen ähnlichen Verknüpfungen unterschieden werden, die weniger plausibel sind. Kant so zu interpretieren, als füge er zum Hauptziel der Abschreckung nur einige nebensächliche Elemente der Vergeltung hinzu, verfehlt den Vergeltungsaspekt in Kants Straftheorie. Die grundlegenden Fragen sind: Wer soll bestraft werden, wie schwer, in welcher Weise und warum? Kant war der Ansicht, daß alle, aber auch nur diejenigen bestraft werden sollen, die sich vor dem juridischen Gesetz schuldig gemacht haben. Wer sich vor dem juridischen Gesetz schuldig gemacht hat, hat sich auch moralisch schuldig gemacht, es sei denn, das vom Recht Geforderte sei etwas "an sich selbst Unmoralisches". Sieht man von diesem letzteren Fall einmal ab, dann enthält jede Übertretung des juridischen Gesetzes immer auch eine Verletzung der ethischen Pflicht, dem juridischen Gesetz zu gehorchen. Strafe sollte darauf angelegt sein, den empirisch erkennbaren Verlusten des Opfers nach Art und Ausmaß zu entsprechen, außer, wenn dies unmöglich oder erniedrigend wäre; Gerichte können die tatsächliche moralische Schuld von Verbrechern, die von ihrem inneren "Willen" abhängt, nicht messen. "Strafe" ist kein bloßes Abschreckungsmittel in einem "Preis"-System sozialer Kontrolle. Statt dessen hat sie die ganz wesentliche und ausdrückliche Funktion, die moralische Mißbilligung des jeweiligen verbrecherischen Verhaltens öffentlich zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Diese Interpretation, zusammen mit Kants grundlegender Theorie der Gerechtigkeit, kann helfen zu verstehen, warum Kant das ius talionis akzeptiert hat und warum er Ausnahmen, die aus pragmatischen Gründen gemacht werden, mißbilligt. Sie erklärt auch den "Tonfall" in Kants Äußerungen, der mir seiner Vergeltungstheorie zusammenhängt, auch wenn Kant darauf beharrt, daß staatliche Gerichte sich immer nur mit "äußeren" Handlungen befassen, nicht mit dem moralischen Wert insgesamt oder mit einer Beurteilung des Charakters einer Person. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Thomas E. Hill, Jr.; Servility and Self-Respect, The Monist, Volume 57, Issue 1, 1 January 1973, Pages 87–104, https://doi.org/10.5840/monist197357135.