Online research in philosophy

In 'Religious Pluralism and the Divine: Another Look at John Hick's Neo-Kantian Proposal' ("Religious Studies", xxx, 1994) Paul Eddy argues against the ultimate ineffability of the Real, and claims that a neo-Kantian epistemology leads to a Feuerbachian non-realism. In response I stress (a) the impossibility of attributing to the Real the range of incompatible characteristics of its phenomenal (i.e. experienceable) manifestations, so that it must lie beyond the range of our human religious categories, and (b) the (...) distinction, which Eddy fails to observe, between grounds for believing in the Divine, and reasons for thinking that the Divine can be differently conceived and experienced. (shrink)

R. E. Ewin has argued that corporations are moral persons, but Ewin describes them as being unable to think or to act in virtuous and vicious ways. Ewin thinks that their impoverished emotional life would not allow them to act in these ways. In this brief essay I want to challenge the idea that corporations cannot act virtuously. I begin by examining deficiencies in Ewin''s notion of corporate personhood. I argue that he effectively reduces corporations to the status of incompetent (...) patients. I shall make use of a richer notion of corporate personhood as I explore the logical relationship between corporate action and the quality of the corporate emotional life. After discussing an alternate methodology for making moral assessments of action I consider briefly two corporate disasters: the crash on Mt. Erebus, the Imperial Foods plant fire. These cases are used to show the inadequacy of Ewin''s thesis that only corporate managers are capable of displaying vice. (shrink)

This is a study of teachers? modelling of civic virtues in the classroom. It focusses on three virtues of good citizenship: justice, tolerance and solidarity. The aim is to explore the extent to which teachers can be regarded as models of these virtues. Questionnaires were developed for both students and teachers. Factor analyses showed that the three virtues could be empirically distinguished in teachers? behaviour. The students rated their teachers higher on the justice and solidarity scales than on the tolerance (...) scale. The teachers rated themselves as less just, but more tolerant than they were rated by their students. Furthermore, the correspondence between students? perceptions and teachers? self-ratings was not high: correlations were only found between ratings of teachers? level of justice. The results of the study indicate that teachers need to become more aware of their exemplary function and the way they are perceived by their students. (shrink)