Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

On The Relevance Of Political Philosophy To Business Ethics, Jeffrey Moriarty

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The central problems of political philosophy (e.g., legitimate authority, distributive justice) mirror the central problems of business ethics. The question naturally arises: should political theories be applied to problems in business ethics? If a version of egalitarianism is the correct theory of justice for states, for example, does it follow that it is the correct theory of justice for businesses? If states should be democratically governed by their citizens, should businesses be democratically managed by their employees? Most theorists who have considered these questions, including John Rawls in Political Liberalism, and Robert Phillips and Joshua Margolis in a 1999 article, …

Foucault And Habermas, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article is a comprehensive comparison of Foucault and Habermas which focuses on their distinctive styles of critical theory. The article maintains that Foucault's virtue ethical understanding of aesthetic self-realization as a form of resistance to normalizing practices provides counterpoint to Habermas's more juridical approach to institutional justice and the critique of ideology. The article contains an extensive discussion of their respective treatments of speech action, both strategic and communicative, and concludes by addressing Foucault's understanding of parrhesia as a non-discursive form of truth-telling.

Kant On Duties To Animals, Nelson T. Potter Jr.

Department of Philosophy: Faculty Publications

According to Kant we human beings are finite rational beings, who also have an animal nature. Kant occasionally speculates that perhaps on other planets there may be quite different sorts of finite rational animals. But of course we have no specific knowledge of any such. Given that fact, all of our duties are duties to other human beings. We can have no duties to God because he is not an object of possible experience. There are no human beings such that they have only duties and no rights--they would be slaves or serfs. And the apparent duties that we have …

Economic Migration And Justice, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Our main thesis is that the U.S. has a duty of justice to adopt an open border policy with regard to economic migrants because it is significantly responsible for the unjust social and economic conditions that bring such migrants to its borders. From this perspective, President Bush’s recent “guest worker” proposal is morally objectionable because it is designed more to serve U.S. business interests than the interests of the migrants. We address three objections to opening borders: it will worsen the economic condition especially of low-skilled native workers; it will harm developing countries by increasing the so-called “brain drain”; and …

Questioning Just War Theory, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Review of: "Michael Walzer, Arguing About War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. 208. Cloth, $25.00. ISBN: 0-300-10365-4."

The Non-Modularity Of Moral Knowledge: Implications For The Universality Of Human Rights, Theresa W. Tobin

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Many contemporary human rights theorists argue that we can establish the normative universality of human rights despite extensive cultural and moral diversity by appealing to the notion of overlapping consensus. In this paper I argue that proposals to ground the universality of human rights in overlapping consensus on the list of rights are unsuccessful. I consider an example from Islamic comprehensive doctrine in order to demonstrate that apparent consensus on the list of rights may not in fact constitute meaningful agreement and may not be sufficient to ground the universality of human rights. I conclude with some general suggestions for …

The Bible And Public Schools: Report On The National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools (Ncbcps), Mark A. Chancey

Occasional Papers

No abstract provided.

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 …

Autonomy, Domination, And The Republican Challenge To Liberalism, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

Like Sunstein and other advocates of 'republican' or 'civic' liberalism, I believe that it is historically unsound and politically unwise to insist on a sharp distinction between liberalism and republicanism. Others disagree, however, and there is much to be learned from their position even if, ultimately, we should not adopt it. Those who take this more radical neo-republican view advance two main lines of argument: first, that the liberal emphasis on neutrality and procedural fairness is fundamentally at odds with the republican commitment to promoting civic virtue; and, second, that republicans and liberals conceive of liberty or freedom in incompatible …

Politics, Rights, And The Refugee Problem, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt pointed to the years between World War I and World War II as the time when the plight of refugees became a pressing political problem.' If Arendt were still alive (she died in 1975), she would no doubt agree that the problem is at least as pressing in the early twenty-first century as it was sixty or more years ago, when she herself was a refugee from Nazi Germany. Who would not agree? According to a report of the U.N. Population Division, 16 million people were refugees at the …

Adam Smith And Greed, Jonathan B. Wight

Economics Faculty Publications

The virtues of greed have been widely promoted by some economists in the 20th century. Allegedly it is Adam Smith who provides this new dignity to greed (Lerner, 1937, ix). Kenneth Arrow and Frank Hahn in the General Equilibrium Analysis (1971), for example, implicitly assume that Adam Smith's self-interest is the greed that promotes economic efficiency (quoted in Evensky, 1993, 203). Walter Williams (1999), a devoted follower of Smith, writes in his column that, "Free markets, private property rights, voluntary exchange, and greed produce preferable outcomes most times and under most conditions." These pronouncements have become part of the cultural …

The Challenge Of Ethical Political Leadership, Brian Stiltner

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Without a solid ethical foundation to state governance, the process of developing and implementing sound public policy is weakened. In addition to the crisis of public confidence, which may turn voters away from politics in disgust, political scandals undermine the quality of the policymaking process.

Connecticut needs watertight laws, vigorous oversight, independent voices, and an electoral process that does not pervert the information voters receive. The responsibility of citizens includes not only voting their consciences but pressing their representatives to put the electoral process and policymaking on a cleaner, more transparent foundation.

[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.

Integrating Leadership With Ethics: Is Good Leadership Contrary To Human Nature?, Joanne B. Ciulla

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

What is it about human nature that makes ethical leadership in any context or culture difficult? This chapter examines leadership in terms of the basic philosophic question concerning human nature. To what extent does free will shape our lives and to what extent are our lives determined by our genes and by fate?

The Perverse Paradox Of Privacy, Gary L. Mcdowell

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The most recent effort of the Supreme Court of the United States to define the judicially created constitutional right to privacy has demonstrated once again why that contrived right poses such a pronounced threat to constitutional self-government. In writing for the majority in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) to overrule a case of only seventeen years' standing that allowed the states to prohibit homosexual sodomy, Justice Anthony Kennedy insisted that the idea of liberty in the Constitution's due process clauses is not limited to protecting individuals form "unwarranted governmental intrusions into a dwelling or other private places" but has "transcendent dimensions" …

The Myth Of Instrumental Rationality, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

My main aim is to explain the normative character of the phenomena that are commonly discussed when theoretical writers discuss instrumental rationality and instrumental reasons. The discussion will assume that there are forms of practical normativity, of practical reasons, which are not instrumental in nature. The question central to the inquiry is what, if any, normative difference does adopting or having an end make? For example, are there instrumental reasons and, if there are, how do they relate to having ends? Are instrumental reasons distinctive kinds of reasons, whose normativity differs in its underlying rationale from that of, say, moral …

Pierre Bayle's Philosophical Commentary On The Words Of Jesus Christ: Compel Them To Come In, John Kilcullen, Chandran Kukathas

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this defence of religious toleration, Bayle discusses the words attributed to Jesus Christ in Luke 14:23, “And the Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.” Bayle contends that the word compel cannot mean “force.” From this perspective, he constructs his doctrine of toleration based on the singular importance of conscience. Bayle argues that if the orthodox have the right and duty to persecute, then every sect will persecute since every sect considers itself orthodox. The result will be mutual slaughter, something God …

Trust (And Social Capital) In Cultural Theory, Marco Verweij

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

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, …

Nietzsche On Truth And The Will, Steven Michels

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

The fundamental — and many would say lingering — challenge to Nietzsche concerns how he can ground the will to power, given what he says about metaphysics as a philosophic prejudice. Does his teaching not topple of its own weight/lessness? It is the standard objection to which all postmodern philosophers must respond. This article examines what Nietzsche says about the limits of truth and the role that experience and perspective have in setting standards by which we might live correctly. The will to power, Nietzsche instructs, is a claim on truth, confirmed only to the extent that it serves life …

Nietzsche, Nihilism, And The Virtue Of Nature, Steven Michels

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

Nietzsche’s view of nature and his attack on the platonic tradition has given him a reputation as a nihilist, a label he himself acknowledged. Yet what does Nietzsche mean by nihilism? and to what extent is he a nihilist? This article explores Nietzsche’s use of the term as it relates to modernity, his own postmodern project, and how it is connected with what Nietzsche calls “virtue.”

On Skepticism About Case-Specific Intuitions, James Mcbain

Faculty Submissions

Moral theorizing is often characterized as beginning from our intuitions about ethical cases. Yet, while many applaud, and even demand, this methodology, there are those who reject such a methodology on the grounds that we cannot treat people’s intuitions about ethical cases as evidence for or against moral theories. Recently, Shelly Kagan has argued that the reliance upon case-specific intuitions in moral theorizing is problematic. Specifically, he maintains that the practice of using intuitions about cases lacks justification and, hence, we ought to be skeptical about the evidential weight of moral intuitions. This leads Kagan to conclude that we ought …

Payment For Egg Donation And Surrogacy, Bonnie Steinbock

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the ethics of egg donation. It begins by looking at objections to noncommercial gamete donation, and then takes up criticism of commercial egg donation. After discussing arguments based on concern for offspring, inequality, commodification, exploitation of donors, and threats to the family, I conclude that some payment to donors is ethically acceptable. Donors should not be paid for their eggs, but rather they should be compensated for the burdens of egg retrieval. Making the distinction between compensation for burdens and payment for a product has the advantages of limiting payment, not distinguishing between donors on the basis …

[Book Review Of] Living The Good Life: What Every Catholic Needs To Know About Moral Issues, By Mark Lowery, William E. May

The Linacre Quarterly

No abstract provided.

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

Playing Politics With Bioethics: Now That's Repugnant, Yvette E. Pearson

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In a recent Washington Post editorial, Leon Kass claimed that neither he nor the President's Council on Bioethics (PCB) is "playing politics with science." At this point, it is clear that nobody really buys this claim. Nonetheless, even if they are not playing politics with science, someone certainly is playing politics with bioethics, which is just as unacceptable, if not worse.

Philisophical Study Of Responsibility, William Doug Bolden

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Adr Ethics, Scott R. Peppet

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Moral Callings And The Duty To Have Children: A Response To Jeff Mitchell, James Mcbain

Faculty Submissions

Jeff Mitchell argues that the good reason for having children is that parenthood is a “moral calling” and that one should heed the call out of a sense of duty and responsibility for the good of society. I argue such a “moral calling” account is mistaken, first, in that Mitchell problematically assumes the “basic intuition” is mistaken and, second, it fails to provide the epistemic conditions for the warranted belief that one would probably make a good parent (a central consideration of Mitchell’s). Thus, such a “moral calling” rationale for the having of children is not superior to rationales that …