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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Impossibility Of Evil Qua Evil: Kantian Limitations On Human Immorality, Timothy Alan Crews-Anderson Jul 2006

The Impossibility Of Evil Qua Evil: Kantian Limitations On Human Immorality, Timothy Alan Crews-Anderson

Philosophy Theses

Kant denies that evil qua evil can be an incentive to human beings. Is this a fact about what sorts of reasons human beings find interesting? Or, is it rooted entirely in Kant’s notion of human freedom? I focus on key facets of Kant’s system: human freedom, immorality and incentives. With an understanding of these concepts based in Christine Korsgaard’s reading of Kant’s moral theory, I argue that the impossibility of acting solely from evil qua evil is not rooted in human incentives and that if we were able to represent an unconditioned principle of immorality, we would have as …


Review Of Metaethical Subjectivism By Richard Double, Matthew Pianalto Jun 2006

Review Of Metaethical Subjectivism By Richard Double, Matthew Pianalto

Matthew Pianalto

"There are no objective values." Thus begins J.L Mackie's classic Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), in which metaethical error-theory was originally expounded. Error-theory holds that although moral judgments appear to be about objective matters (e.g. what is really valuable, what we really ought to do), there is no good reason to believe that there are objective values, and so all moral judgments are false because they fail to refer. In Metaethical Subjectivism, Richard Double again makes the case for error-theory by focusing upon the fragmentary character of our moral intuitions and the apparent impossibility of corralling all of these …


Natural-Law Judaism?: The Genesis Of Bioethics In Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss And Leon Kass, Lawrence A. Vogel May 2006

Natural-Law Judaism?: The Genesis Of Bioethics In Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss And Leon Kass, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Leon Kass is much misunderstood. He is not simply a Republican ideologue who tailored his ideas to break out of the ivory tower and into the halls of power. Nor does he look simply to use human nature as a moral guide. When the full range of his writings is considered and set in the tradition of his teachers, Hans Jonas and Leo Strauss, what emerges is a natural law position colored by religious revelation.


Occupational Safety And Paternalism: Machan Revisited, Earl W. Spurgin Jan 2006

Occupational Safety And Paternalism: Machan Revisited, Earl W. Spurgin

Philosophy

In 1987, Machan provided a libertarian case against the right to occupational safety. Since before Machan’s essay appeared, many business ethicists and legal scholars have given considerable attention to the overall position Machan endorses: the acceptance of employment at will and the rejection of employee rights. No one yet has given adequate attention, however, to the fact that Machan’s argument against the right to occupational safety actually stands or falls independently of his overall position on employee rights. His argument ultimately rests on two values: the promotion of employee interests and anti-paternalism. Insofar as those who support the right to …


Introduction: Comparative Ethics And The Crucible Of War, G. Scott Davis Jan 2006

Introduction: Comparative Ethics And The Crucible Of War, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Michael Howard takes the title of his recent essay, The Invention of Peace, from the nineteenth-century jurist and historian of comparative law Henry Maine, who wrote that "war appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modem invention."' We moderns tend to assume that the great wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were aberrant eruptions marring the peaceful status quo, but the opposite better describes the long view. Outside the Garden of Eden, human communities have always been involved in political conflict and that conflict has regularly escalated to the use of lethal force, both …


Teaching The Ethical Foundations Of Economics: The Principles Course, Jonathan B. Wight Jan 2006

Teaching The Ethical Foundations Of Economics: The Principles Course, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

When we analyze the source of humor, one ingredient is surely incongruity, the juxtaposition of opposites. So when Tom Lehrer, the consummate Harvard mathematician, openly calls for plagiarism, this is funny because it is exactly the opposite of what we expect - it is absurd. And yet, from the viewpoint of modern economics, is plagiarism really so absurd? We teach our students to maximize short-term profits (in a moral vacuum). We drill them that producers minimize private costs of production (without reference to ethical codes of conduct). We expect economic agents to operate with atomistic selfishness, assuring them that this …


Heideggers "Beiträge Zur Philosophie" Als Ethik. Phronesis Und Die Frage Nach Der Technik Im Naturwissenschaftlichen Zeitalter., Babette Babich Jan 2006

Heideggers "Beiträge Zur Philosophie" Als Ethik. Phronesis Und Die Frage Nach Der Technik Im Naturwissenschaftlichen Zeitalter., Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.


Moralizing In Public, Anita L. Allen Jan 2006

Moralizing In Public, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.