Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

There's No "I" In Team: Individualism, Private Property, And Propriety In Cicero's De Officiis, Alex C. Parrish

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Introduction To John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, which first appeared in three installments of Fraser's Magazine in 1861, was intended as a defense of the notorious doctrine identified with the liberal reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and with the author's father, James Mill (1773-1836). The defense was successful. While "the principle of utility, or as Bentham has latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle," may have scandalized Victorian England, Mill's Utilitarianism became one of the defining documents of modern British and American liberalism. It is impossible to appreciate contemporary social and political life without coming to grips with utilitarianism.

Introduction To G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

When Principia Ethica appeared, in 1903, it became something of a sacred text for the Cambridge-educated elites-Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes-who, along with Virginia Woolf, would form the core of the Bloomsbury Group. In a letter of October 11, 1903, Strachey confesses to Moore that he is "carried away" by Principia, which inaugurates, for him, "the beginning of the Age of Reason." Moore's critique of convention, his caustic dismissal of his philosophical predecessors, and the relentless rigor of his method promised a revolution in morality commensurate with the modernist transformation of art and literature. Principia Ethica shifted …

[Introduction To] The Quest For Moral Leaders: Essays On Leadership Ethics, Joanne B. Ciulla, Terry L. Price, Susan E. Murphy

Bookshelf

The quest for moral leaders is both a personal quest that takes place in the hearts and minds of leaders and a pursuit by individuals, groups, organizations, communities and societies for leaders who are both ethical and effective. The contributors to this volume, all top scholars in leadership studies and ethics, provide a nuanced discussion of the complex ethical relationships that lie at the core of leadership.

Nietzsche And The Religion Of The Future, Steven Michels

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

This article examines the place of religion in Nietzsche’s writings and how it fits with the task of a “new philosopher.” Although Nietzsche opposes all otherworldly, monotheistic religions, it is incorrect to say that Nietzsche proposes atheism as a solution. Religion, he contends, is an essential part of any healthy culture. Nietzsche’s new philosophy would fashion gods consistent with the natural order of rank and the highest aims of man.

Nietzsche conceives of modernity not as progress but an unhealthy and dangerous break with tradition that he seeks to set right. Consequently, he turns to the greatness of antiquity. Nietzsche, …

The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’S Philosophy Of The Two, Alenka Zupancic (Book Review), Steven Michels

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

Book review by Steven Michels.

Zupančič, A. (2003). The shortest shadow: Nietzsche’s philosophy of the two. MIT Press.

ISBN 9780262740265

Nietzsche’S Aphoristic Turn, Steven Michels

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

Nietzsche’s use of the aphorism has most often been taken as evidence of his esotericism. Nietzsche was less than clear in his writings, it is claimed, because he did not want his true teaching to be available to just anyone. This article contends the opposite—that is, that Nietzsche wrote aphoristically for the very purpose of being read, and understood, by the widest possible audience. Moreover, this change in style had a marked impact on the nature of his philosophy. Unburdened by conventional methods, Nietzsche’s critique of modernity became more exact and his own positive philosophy became more radical.

Wittgenstein And The Recovery Of Virtue, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Modern, scientific, man doesn't see miracles, only odd phenomena that call out for more thorough study. Ethics, like the miraculous, doesn't defy scientific explanation; it just doesn't exist. In what follows I hope to do two things., On the one hand, I want to embrace Wittgenstein's rejection of ethics as theory, in the sense of a systematic body of knowledge about the world. On the other, I hope to suggest that this rejection opens up conceptual space for understanding ethics as a critical human enterprise.

The Political Psychology Of Collateral Damage, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article provides commentary on how a government purporting to be representative democracy might best approach the construct of collateral damage.

Trends. Implications Of War And Peace For The Morality, Ethics, And Legality Of Killing And Incarceration, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article provides a perspective for the controversy surrounding the appropriateness of killing and incarceration during a war on terrorism with global reach.

Kant's Taxonomy Of The Emotions, Kelly Sorensen

Philosophy and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

If there is to be any progress in the debate about what sort of positive moral status Kant can give the emotions, we need a taxonomy of the terms Kant uses for these concepts. It used to be thought that Kant had little room for emotions in his ethics. In the past three decades, Marcia Baron, Paul Guyer, Barbara Herman, Nancy Sherman, Allen Wood and others have argued otherwise. Contrary to what a cursory reading of the Groundwork may indicate, Kant thinks the emotions play an important role in the moral life. I want to extend the work of Baron, …

On The Evolution Of Depression, Mike W. Martin

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

In "Depression as a Mind-Body Problem," Walter Glannon outlines a psychosocial-physiological explanation of depression as a psychological response to chronic stress—today, especially social stress—in which cortisol imbalances disrupt neurotransmitters. Accordingly, treatment for depression should combine psychopharmacology and psychotherapy—a valuable reminder in light of the current restrictions on funding for health care (Hobson and Leonard 2001). My comments focus, however, on Glannon's objections to evolutionary theorists who explain our capacity for depression as adaptive to the natural and social environment. His objections are implausible because he fails to distinguish depression as a mood and a disorder.

Trends. Correct Political Incorrectness: Can Germans Be Right About Jews?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses former Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl's analogy, which compared boycotts of his fundraising campaign to pay for fines incurred on his political party because of his illegal and illicit fund-raising initiatives to Nazi-era boycotts of Jewish shops.

Slavery And The Sudan: Can Good Works Be Good?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article focuses on the consequences of attempts to free slaves and abolish slavery in the Sudan.

Trends. Human Rights And Mental Health: What Happens When The Right Are Wrong?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

In this analysis the author discusses the moral and ethical criteria of those who seek to prevent human rights violations.

Moral Addicts, Anthony Cunningham

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Moral exemplars are often depicted as those who go to extraordinary lengths in preventing suffering and eradicating injustice. Thus, figure like Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Martin Luther King are apt to be identified as moral saints in the sense of being the morally best people. However, any adequate conception of moral excellence must be broader and more complex.

Hermann Cohen’S Political Philosophy And The Communitarian Critique Of Liberalism, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

My main aim here is to examine what the significance is of the communitarian critique of liberalism for Hermann Cohen's political philosophy. I will conclude that Cohen's socialist Kantianism can successfully meet this critique. Also, I will argue that his political philosophy can better deal with some of the problems that communitarians detect in our Western democracies than can communitarianism itself. One crucial reason for this is that Cohen completes the original Kantian liberal project by making all agents fully autonomous in the economic sphere.

Love And Power: The Rule Of Religion And Morality In American Politics, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Perry, Michael J. Love and Power: The Rule of Religion and Morality in American Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. viii + 218 pp. $29.95

The author's introduces this sequel to his Morality, Politics, and Law as an extended gloss on John Noonan's statement that the "central problem of the legal enterprise is the relation of love to power." The renown of its author ensures that Love and Power will become a focal point in legal academic discussion of its central concern: the proper relation between morality, particularly religious morality, political choice, and public deliberation "in a morally …

Cohen, Collective Responsibility, And Economic Democracy, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

My main objective in this paper is to show that Hermann Cohen's ethics offers an important but hitherto neglected contribution to the- current debate within Anglo-American ethics on the moral status of the modern business corporation.

Rethinking "Original Intent", David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Although Dred Scott v. Sandford is one of the Supreme Court's most controversial decisions, it is not often taught or read. But its approach to constitutional interpretation is by no means outdated, and its historical importance has not diminished. So it seems a good example to consider.

Reflections On Identity, Diversity And Morality, Deborah W. Post

Scholarly Works

The author reflects over events in her life that helped her define herself and her ethical identity, a black woman teacher.

Translating, Repeating, Naming: Foucault, Derrida And The Genealogy Of Morals, Gary Shapiro

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Two cautions or warnings (at least) must be heeded in the attempt to do justice to Nietzsche's project of a genealogy of morals in the text that bears that name. While the Genealogy is often regarded as the most straightforward and continuous of Nietzsche's books, he tells us in Ecce Homo that its three essays are "perhaps uncannier than anything else written so far in regard to expression, intention, and the art of surprise.” If we should think ourselves successful in penetrating to these uncanny secrets and saying what Nietzsche's text means, once and for all, we would then have …

A Case Against Animal Rights, Jan Narveson

Animal Welfare Collection

Down through the past decade and more, no philosophical writer has taken a greater interest in the issues of how we ought to act in relation to animals, nor pressed more strongly the case for according them rights, than has Tom Regan, in many articles, reviews, and exchanges at scholarly conferences and in print. It is a pleasure to join him on this symposium, to explore this interesting and important set of issues.

I shall begin by outlining, as fairly as I can, Regan's view of the matter, and then sketch my alternative. Regan has in fact criticized certain aspects …

The Connection Between Law And Morality: Comments On Dworkin, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Our discussions yesterday seemed haunted by a contrast--never quite formulated--between Natural Law and Legal Positivism. The standard interpretation turns on the idea of a "necessary connection" between law and morality. Positivism has often been understood to hold, and Natural Law to deny, that there can be unjust laws.

Is Man's Infliction Of Suffering On Animals Immoral?, Robert Welborn

Attitudes Towards Animals Collection

If it is believed that man is properly in dominion over the earth and that he may do with it and all things on it as he will, then the first definition is sufficient. If generally accepted ideas in man's community are to the effect that man's infliction of suffering on animals is right, then such is not immoral.

If it is believed, however, that life, all life, as it has evolved in its beauty and complexity is the consideration upon which conduct should be judged, then the second definition must apply. Man being the dominant species that consciously and …

Marx And Morality: An Impossible Synthesis?, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

A discussion of Allen E. Buchanan, Marx and Justice (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982); Marshall Cohen, Thomas Nagel, and Thomas Scanlon, eds., Marx. Justice. and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); and Kai Nielsen and Steven C. Patten, eds., Marx and Morality, Supplementary Volume VII of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy, 1981).

The Question Of Atheism And Communism In The Animal Welfare/Rights Movement, Michael W. Fox

Animal Welfare Collection

Just as economics has increasingly been employed as a political weapon, so religion is now being used to further self-serving goals. Agribusiness spokespersons not only use fallacious economic arguments to justify the "factory" farming of animals; they have also stated that any questioning about man's Godgiven right to exploit animals is atheistic, and perhaps an actual affront to God's will. Furthermore, taking an egalitarian attitude toward animals, and proposing that they have rights or should be given equal and fair consideration, is regarded as the inspiration of some covert communist conspiracy that is constantly working to restructure and thereby destroy …

Professional And Ordinary Morality: A Reply To Freedman, Mike W. Martin

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

Mike Martin responds to the article "Professional and Ordinary Morality."

Rights And The Meta-Ethics Of Professional Morality, Mike W. Martin

Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research

This article looks into the Meta-Ethics of medical professionals.

The Nature Of The Contract Argument, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

As truth is the first virtue of belief, so justice is of social institutions. That is John Rawls's view, and it seems true, at any rate, of the law. Official acts, laws, and legal arrangements generally are characterized as just or unjust, while other moral categories are much less frequently invoked. Justice seems inseparable from good law. It is therefore striking and important that justice has recently been regarded by prominent legal theorists as rationally disreputable--as, in Kelsen's words, "an irrational idea." Many divergent conceptions of social justice have been propounded, and it is held that there is no rational …