The article is a detailed case study of theft and fraud by an employee in an organization. The analysis suggests that in the process of dealing with the employee, the issue was notprimarily one of ethics, but of two moral principles in conflict, compassion and concern for a fellow human being and the morality governing responses to betrayal. The latter governed the results because that morality was congruent with the predominant ethics of the organization concerned with preserving the authority structure (...) and integrity of the organization rather than the personal welfare of the individual in the organization. In sum, the paper argues that, based on this case, organizational behavior towards individual employees may be determined by individual morality that is reinforced by organizational ethical principles more concerned with the self interest of the organization than ethics per se. (shrink)

After placing the issue of holding international institutional agents responsible within a theoretical context, this article takes up the case of the UN's role in the Rwandan genocide. Through an examination of the extensive literature that deals either directly or incidentally with the UN's role and responsibility during the period prior to the outbreak of mass killing on 6 April 1994, this essay tests a slightly modified version of Toni Erskine's theory of why international institutional agents can be held responsible (...) for their actions. The article details the various ways that different parts of the UN have been held responsible for failing to prevent and mitigate the genocide. Moreover, it documents specific failures in four different categories: failures in communication, deliberation, decision-making, and implementation. The article concludes that the extensive literature on the Rwandan genocide conforms to a slightly modified version of the Erskine model. It also suggests that practical, functional reforms — which are far easier to implement than structural reforms — can be initiated based on that model. (shrink)

Hegel, in the Preface to the Phenomenology, states that it seems not only superfluous but inappropriate and misleading to begin a work of philosophy by explaining the end the author had in mind, the circumstances which gave rise to the work, and the strategies the author has adopted, in contrast to those of his contemporaries and predecessors. If such a preface is appropriate, then it will be an unphilosophical preface to a philosophical work. If the preface attempts to be philosophical, (...) then it seems not only inappropriate but superfluous and misleading. (shrink)

The paper first demonstrates the ability to provode objective data and analyses during war and then examines the need for such objective gathering of data and analysis in the context of mass violence and war, specifically in the 2009 Gaza War. That data and analysis is required to assess compliance with just war norms in assessing the conduct of the war, a framework quite distinct from human rights norms that can misapply and deform the application of norms such as proportionality (...) and obligations not to target civilians. (shrink)

This paper examines the research leading from the initial discovery of a disease in 1957 to its complete description twenty years later. The analysis reveals four stages in the discovery process and attempts to pinpoint the key characteristics of each of those stages. It is suggested that the early stages in the process have some of the characteristics depicted by T. H. Kuhn about the logic of discovery whereas the later stages exemplify the characteristics of the logic of discovery propounded (...) by Karl Popper. (shrink)

Walter Kaufmann’s Discovering the Mind is not a disaster - to use the language he applies to Kant’s writing - only because it is unlikely to have any significant consequences. Nevertheless, it is a bad book. It is bad intellectual history, bad psychology and bad philosophy. What is more, beneath the “clear, lively and readable” prose, which Isaiah Berlin celebrates, one finds intellectual confusion, boring repetition and a chaotic mind.