Economist-philosopher Amartya Sen's writings on social and political issues have attracted wide audiences. Section 2 introduces his contributions on: how people reason as agents within society; social determinants of people's (lack of) access to goods and of the effective freedoms and agency they enjoy or lack; and associated advocacy of self-specification of identity and high expectations for ‘voice’ and reasoning democracy. Section 3 considers his relation to social theory, his tools for theorizing action in society, and his limited degree of (...) attention to work by sociologists and to capitalism and power structures. Section 4 characterizes a style marked by conceptual refinement, emphases on complexity and individuality, including personal individuality, and reformist optimism. Section 5 shows the features from Sections 3 and 4 at work in his conception of personhood that advocates freedom to make a reasoned composition of personal identity. Similarly, Section 6 addresses his conception of public reasoning and neglect of the sociology of democracy. It contrasts the ideal of a reasoning polity with features in many countries. Sen's programmes for critical autonomy in personhood and for reasoned politics play, nevertheless, a normic role, while his analytical formats help investigation of obstacles to more widespread agency, voice, and democratic participation. (shrink)

Sabina Lovibond invites her readers to see how the "practical reason view of ethics" can survive challenges from within philosophy and from the antirationalist postmodern critique of reason. She elaborates and defends a modern practical-reason view of ethics by focusing on virtue or ideal states of character that involve sensitivity to the objective reasons circumstances bring into play. At the heart of her argument is the Aristotelian idea of the formation of character through upbringing; these ancient ideas can be (...) made contemporary if one understands them in a naturalized way. She then explores the implications that arise from the naturalization of the classical view, weaving into her theory ideas of Jacques Derrida and J. L. Austin. The book also discusses two modes of resistance to an existing ethical culture--one committed to the critical employment of shared norms of rationality, the other aspiring to a more radical attitude, grounded in hostility to the "universal." Lovibond tries to determine what may be correct in this second, admittedly paradoxical, tendency. This is a timely and valuable effort to connect the most advanced forms of thinking in the analytic tradition and in the Continental tradition, and to extend our understanding of the intimacies and resistances between these two prominent strands of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

From the book To my mind the most striking development in ethical theory since the 1970s has been an attempt to reactivate the Platonic-Aristotelian ethical ...

A critical review of Sabina Lovibond's book Ethical Formation (2004).

In the past few years, we have seen emerging new work that brings into focus the role of historical change and its moral implications in Iris Murdoch's philosophy. This paper strengthens this reading of her work and investigates the implications of this aspect of Murdoch's thinking for education in general and for moral education in particular. It resituates the Platonic imagery of the individual's ascent towards the true and the good in a framework where our conceptions of the true and (...) the good are in a process of historical reconfiguration. (shrink)

The Sermon on the Mount is a coherent text, consistently drawing on words, expressions, and sacred values that were principally at home in the Old Testament Psalms and in the spiritual functions of the Temple of Jerusalem. Noticing these powerful allusions and understanding the moral authority that they would have conveyed to the ears of its earliest listeners opens insights into the ability of the Sermon on the Mount to communicate an authoritative moral vision, to engender a shared community (...) class='Hi'>ethic, and to instill a firm commitment to its ethical imperatives. No text is more important or has had more influence on the history and character of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount. The mystery of the Temple offers important keys for hearing the rhetorical voice of the Sermon and unlocking its enduring and everlasting potency in ethical formation. (shrink)

How do abstract doctrinal ideas become visible and meaningful in the lives of religious practitioners? This article approaches this question by examining the diary of the Tibetan pilgrim Khatag Zamyak (kha stag 'dzam yag) (1896–1961) to explore how he engages with the idea of karma. Scholars of Buddhism often define karma as a law of cause and effect that is fundamental to Buddhist ethics, but this third‐person approach to understanding karma can lead scholars to overlook what it feels like to (...) live in a world structured by karma. This article explores how Khatag Zamyak confronts the fact that he does not know his own karma and how he undertakes specific practices to be able to see and tell stories about his own karma. It further argues that Khatag Zamyak's process of engaging with karma is integral to his formation as an ethical subject. (shrink)

Contributing to the naturalistic virtue ethics tradition, Natural Citizens applies recent work in the life sciences to develop a form of ethical naturalism that aspires to be non-reductive yet empirically responsible.

In what sense, if any, does the dominant conception of the traditional theistic God as disembodied inform our embodied experiences? Feminist philosophers of religion have been either explicitly or implicitly preoccupied by a philosophical failure to address such questions concerning embodiment and its relationship to the divine. To redress this failure, certain feminist philosophers have sought to appropriate Luce Irigaray’s argument that embodied divinity depends upon women themselves becoming divine. This article assesses weaknesses in the Irigarayan position, notably the problematic (...) move from a woman’s subjectivity to divinity. In the light of these weaknesses the author looks for a better alternative. Drawing on the work of feminist and nonfeminist philosophers, a feminist-friendly conception of theism is sketched in terms of incarnation and intersubjectivity. Philosophical accounts of the ethical formation of gendered subjects by way of bodily practices offer new concepts for con. (shrink)

In what sense, if any, does the dominant conception of the traditional theistic God as disembodied inform our embodied experiences? Feminist philosophers of religion have been either explicitly or implicitly preoccupied by a philosophical failure to address such questions concerning embodiment and its relationship to the divine. To redress this failure, certain feminist philosophers have sought to appropriate Luce Irigaray’s argument that embodied divinity depends upon women themselves becoming divine. This article assesses weaknesses in the Irigarayan position, notably the problematic (...) move from a woman’s subjectivity to divinity. In the light of these weaknesses the author looks for a better alternative. Drawing on the work of feminist and non‐feminist philosophers, a feminist‐friendly conception of theism is sketched in terms of incarnation and intersubjectivity. Philosophical accounts of the ethical formation of gendered subjects by way of bodily practices offer new concepts for confronting and transforming the discursive tradition of philosophy of religion. With these concepts, the formation of women’s collective historical experience within a tradition mediated by philosophical texts takes on new significance for feminist philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Research on migrant care and domestic workers has focused on their multiple dislocations and exclusions in the diaspora, analysing a highly gendered global economy of care and domestic work. This article investigates the role of ritual performance and spirituality in female care workers’ projects of migration and in the emergence of their feminized and racialized subjectivities. On the basis of anthropological research in Israel and the Philippines, it analyses Filipina care workers’ narratives of migration to Israel as a form of (...) spiritual transformation, investigating their spiritual practices and emphasis on Christian morals like ‘compassion’ and ‘patience’ for their work. Israel, a country that has recruited Filipinos as carers for the elderly since the 1990s, is a destination country highly valued among Filipino Christians as the ‘Holy Land’. Focusing on evangelical Christians, the article portrays four women for whom migration to Israel signifies an ethical career: turning into ‘Holy Land’ pilgrims, Christ-like activists and missionaries, they are engaged in a deeply self-transforming journey. Rooting themselves in Christian spiritualities and morals, these women negotiate and ‘inhabit’ rather than openly challenge existing gender norms. Engaged in corporeal disciplining of their selves during affectively demanding care work, and in migration more generally, their moves are analysed as a form of ethical formation. (shrink)

Ethics is freedom in Christ to pursue the good, true, and beautiful. Pastors regularly face concrete ethical questions. And they, too, pursue a moral life. In the busyness of ministry, it can be tempting to think pragmatically or derive one's ethics from the latest cultural concerns. But standard approaches to ethics, whether deontological, utilitarian, or virtue-ethical, all fall short of being distinctly Christian. Ethics ought to be grounded in the gospel and in our triune God. In Pastoral Ethics, W. Ross (...) Hastings provides pastors an evangelical and trinitarian framework for moral formation and ethical discernment. For Hastings, ethics must be reclaimed as theological. Theology without ethics becomes gnosticism. Ethics without theology leads to legalism and death. Christian ethics participates in God's life and God's work. This communion with God leads to obedience to his commands as summed up in the Decalogue, and over several chapters Hastings provides a rich exposition for pastoral formation. Pastors find their identity in God, and this inspires right thinking and acting with regard to authority, life and death, sexuality, work and rest, speech, and desires. An approach to ethics that prompts faith, hope, and love, Pastoral Ethics is an essential guide for Christians in all ministry contexts. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to think about the thematics of the inventive formation of teachers crossed by the aesthetic activity of self writing. Therefore, we echo the question made by Maurice Blanchot when we confront the language of research in education linked to the requirement for its discontinuity, so that the written word is plural and involved with the movement of an aesthetic experience: “How to write in such a way that the continuity of the movement of (...) writing might let interruption as meaning, and rupture as form, intervene fundamentally?” Two axes of analysis and intervention were investigated: the notion of self writing of Michel Foucault and the idea of text and outside the text of René Lourau. There are circles that aim to guide the reader in the trajectories of the research on inventive teacher formation and their diaristic fragments. The circles are not separated, but meet each other and resonate with the axes of self writing, of the text and of the outside the text, these being: research with; cartography; research diary and writing restitution. There are inventive resonances, where each diary fragment, more than being a fragment, is the expression of an action that constitutes effective practices open to intensities and differences. However, the work of the diary is reversed by taking it away from the standard, to be able to treat it closer to alterity, to the ethical, aesthetic and political subjectivity processes of inventive teacher formation. (shrink)

North American archaeologists have long defined their ethical responsibilities in terms of a commitment to scientific goals and an opposition to looting, vandalism, the commercial trade in antiquities, and other activities that threaten archaeological resources. In recent years, the clarity of these commitments has been eroded from two directions: professional archaeologists find commercial entanglements increasingly unavoidable, and a number of nonarchaeological interest groups object that they are not served by scientific exploitation of the record. I offer an analysis of issues (...) having to do with the identity of archaeology that underlie this debate and outline one strategy of response now emerging. (shrink)

스피노자 철학은 초기 라캉에서 중요한 준거였다가 이후 포기된다. 그러나 라캉 이론이 본격적으로 전개될 때도, 특히 상상계 개념 및 이와 연관된 정신분석학 윤리의 구상에서 스피노자는 결정적인 참조점이 되었던 것으로 보인다. 이 가정을 나는 우선 스피노자의 ????윤리학???? 3부에서 외부 대상 및 자아가 정서 법칙, 특히 정서 모방을 통해 상상적으로 구성되는 과정을 재구성함으로써 뒷받침한다. 다음으로, 상상적 구조를 인간 경험의 근본 조건으로 보면서도 상상계에 기반을 둔 좋음의 윤리와 단절하는 욕망의 윤리를 표방한다는 점에서도 라캉과 스피노자의 지속적 연대 가능성은 발견된다. 마지막으로, 그럼에도 좁혀지지 않는 둘 사이의 (...) 거리를 나는 주체 자신의 죽음의 환상에서 찾았다. 라캉에게서 이 환상이 희생의 매혹을 설명하는 핵심 요소라면, 스피노자에게서는 이런 환상이 존재론적으로 불가능하고 그래서 희생의 매혹을 설명하기 어려운것이다. (shrink)

This paper examines the methodological problem of casuistry by reference to Immanuel Kant's position on it. He addressed “Casuistical Questions” in his last work on ethics, Metaphysik der Sitten, in order to defend his position against attacks from scholars defending an Aristotelian eudemonistic viewpoint. It is argued that Kantian casuistry has much in common with the Aristotelian idea of emphasizing the moral objectives and sensibility of an agent in concrete circumstances. Nevertheless, Kant did not entirely adopt the case-oriented ethical perspective (...) because he saw the moral duty as the „wide“ one. Moral duties are wide in the sense that they demand continuous self-examination: asking whether there might be a better way to limit one's maxim by another. According to Kant, although casuistry as a case study could give moral law or duties more practicability through the training of moral judgment, the moral agent cannot use with individual cases in order to modify or devise new moral rules or duties. (shrink)

This book argues that formation lies at the heart of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ethical project. Ryan Huber examines Bonhoeffer's life story and his most influential ethical writings, from his encounter with Jesus Christ in the early 1930s until his arrest in 1943, to illustrate the centrality of Christological formation in both.

Challenging a long-standing assumption of the separation of ethical from poetic activity, this essay develops the basis for a theory of moral life as inherently and radically creative. A range of contemporary post-Kantian ethicists--including Ricoeur, Nussbaum, Kearney, and Gutiérrez--are employed to make the argument that moral practice requires a fundamental capability for creative transformation, imagination, and social renewal. In addition, this poetic moral capability can finally be understood only from the primordial religious point of view of the mystery of Creation (...) as such. Humanity as an image of its Creator is called to the endless impossible possibility of the re-creation of its own complex, plural, and fallen social world. Such a perspective is opposed to views of moral life as the application of law-like principles or the recovery of past moral histories. Without a better understanding of moral life's radically creative imperative, we miss a vital element of social relations' distinctive humanity. (shrink)

Franchising in the business format sector accounted for approximately 35 percent of retail sales in the U.S. in 1991. Consequently, the franchising industry has a clear ethical responsibility to the public. At the same time, there exists an ethical obligation of the two major factors in the industry — the franchisor and the franchise — toward each other. Because the franchise agreement, which is the basis of the relationship, is originated by the franchisor, an asymmetrical distribution of power often exists, (...) resulting in opportunistic behavior by the franchisor. In other cases, questionable or unethical practices by franchisees likewise result in conflict. This paper examines some of the basic areas of the franchise relationship which result in conflict, and discusses the situation analysis in business format franchising, which shows promise for reduction of conflict and unethical behavior for the future. (shrink)