The author discusses to what extent a generally binding norm of social justice can be established in a modern, plural society. Though the principles of social justice and their sources of normativity are plural, they are interdependent. It is their intelligibility that makes them universal.

The De Doctrina Christiana is one of Augustine's most important works on the classical tradition. Undertaken at the same time as the Confessions, is sheds light on the development of Augustine's thought, especially in the areas of ethics, hermeneutics, and sign-theory. What is most interesting, however, is its careful attempt to indicate precisely what elements of a classical education are valuable for a Christian, and how the precepts of Ciceronian rhetoric may be used to communicate Christian truth. An up-to-date (...) translation has long been necessary, for readers of Augustine and all who study the early church, or the classical tradition, or the history of literary criticism or Biblical interpretation. This completely new translation gives a close but stylish representation of Augustine's thought and expression. A succinct introduction and select bibliography embodies the results of recent work. (shrink)

Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral--Friedrich-Schiller-Universitèat Jena, 2012) originally presented under title: Spèatantike christliche Vorstellungen von der Welt.

How does one understand the relationship between a person and their objects of belief in the philosophy of Religion? How does the object of belief impact individuals’ lives, choices, decisions, and what they become in the future? The character of religion is binding, and the object of belief in a being – transcendent or immanent as the sole determinant of the fate and destiny of individuals leaves room for many questions that border on freedom and responsibility. By introducing Onyenachiya to (...) the discussion of the phenomenon of religion from an African philosophical approach to religion, the authors argue that there is a certain threshold of self-evaluation and relationship between a person and their object of belief which is significantly cooperative and collaborative. Although onyenachiya, a concept that stems from an African epistemic context (Igbo), has no corresponding English translation, it is a contraction of two independent words, onye (person, giver, who) and chi (personal god, doppelgänger). The two are joined together by conjunction, ‘na’ with the suffix ‘ya’ at the end, emphasizing the chi’s personal and unique nature. The authors argue that if chi is connected to a person's destiny, onyenachiya demonstrates an agent-centered destiny, which gives room for agency, accountability, and responsibility and gives a new account of religious tolerance. (shrink)

National education is a conscious and planned effort to help children develop their potential be spiritually strong, religious, intelligent, a strong personality and noble character and noble skills. For this reason, education not only focuses on the aspect of children's knowledge but also on religion and morals aspects. This education begins in the family through communication patterns that are created between parents and children in the form of interpersonal communication that can increase the religiosity of adolescents. Therefore, this article aims (...) to measure the interpersonal communication within the family. The author uses quantitative methods with technical correlation to determine the relationship between two variables, namely interpersonal communication in the family and youth religiosity, and includes 303 adolescents as a sample. The data were collected using a Likert scale and processed using Excel and SPSS 16 programs in order to obtain the results that the application of good interpersonal communication in families will increase adolescent religiosity. This leads to the conclusion 'there is a mutually influential relationship between interpersonal communication in the family and adolescent religiosity'.CONTRIBUTION: This article contributes to Christian families in increasing interpersonal communication as a pattern of youth formation, because it can increase their religiosity. (shrink)

National education is a conscious and planned effort to help children develop their potential be spiritually strong, religious, intelligent, a strong personality and noble character and noble skills. For this reason, education not only focuses on the aspect of children’s knowledge but also on religion and morals aspects. This education begins in the family through communication patterns that are created between parents and children in the form of interpersonal communication that can increase the religiosity of adolescents. Therefore, this article aims (...) to measure the interpersonal communication within the family. The author uses quantitative methods with technical correlation to determine the relationship between two variables, namely interpersonal communication in the family and youth religiosity, and includes 303 adolescents as a sample. The data were collected using a Likert scale and processed using Excel and SPSS 16 programs in order to obtain the results that the application of good interpersonal communication in families will increase adolescent religiosity. This leads to the conclusion ‘there is a mutually influential relationship between interpersonal communication in the family and adolescent religiosity’.Contribution: This article contributes to Christian families in increasing interpersonal communication as a pattern of youth formation, because it can increase their religiosity. (shrink)

Cross-sector social collaborations are increasingly recognised as valuable inter-organizational arrangements that seek to combine the commercial capabilities of private sector companies with the deep knowledge of social and environmental issues enrooted in social sector organizations. In this paper we empirically examine the configurations of conditions that lead to lasting cross-sector social collaboration. Situating our enquiry in Schütz’s theory of life-worlds and the reciprocity literature, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to analyse data gathered from 60 partners in 30 cross-sector social (...) collaborations. We find two distinct types of configurational pathways leading to lasting cross-sector social collaboration which we label reciprocal economic exchange based on direct reciprocity, and reciprocal social exchange based on generalised reciprocity. The pathways vary in terms of the delivery of expected and unexpected resources and benefits. We introduce the concept of double relationality to explain the interdependence of structure and action in lasting cross sector social collaboration. (shrink)

It is commonly presupposed that there are no decisive differences between empathy with fictional characters on one hand and empathy with real persons on the other. I distinguish two types of processes of affect recognition "Perceptual Affect Recognition" and "Affective Affect Recognition". The consensus view about empathy with fictional characters has to be challenged if "empathy" refers to the former or the latter process because of the significant differences between the fictional and the non-fictional scenario: firstly, readers as "empathizers" cannot (...) perceive the fictional target person directly but only the literary text. This is especially problematic for Affective State Recognition. Secondly, fictional characters do not exist, at least not in the sense that they are real people or entities with mental states which leads to relevant differences of the accuracy conditions of Affective Affect Recognition in the fictional and the nonfictional scenario. (shrink)

PAULI MURRAY WAS AN ACTIVIST, LAWYER, AND PRIEST WHOSE AVocation was writing. In this essay I first contextualize Murray's life and works, and I analyze her poetry and ethical vision. I focus on three themes in her poetry: race and interlocking oppressions, the "dream" of America and historiography, and the creative ethical power of productive anger. I engage womanist scholarship as a conversation partner throughout the essay. Moving inductively from my analysis of Murray's poetry, I offer several constructive suggestions about (...) the role and heuristic of poetry in contemporary theological and social ethics. (shrink)

Social enterprises, like almost all organizations, continuously strive for external legitimacy. To be perceived as externally legitimated by society, social enterprises often engage in strategic partnerships. However, scholars have only recently turned their attention to the legitimating function of such partnerships. The purpose of this article is to address the hitherto neglected construct of inter-partner legitimacy. Drawing on institutional theory, we hypothesize that such inter-partner legitimacy affects the resource transfer among partners, which will, in turn, be recognized by society and (...) will subsequently affect each partner’s external legitimacy. Dyadic data of 121 strategic partnerships between social enterprises and their key partners confirm our hypotheses. We add to institutional theory by integrating the often ignored dimension of inter-partner legitimacy into our analysis and demonstrate its relevance to each partner’s external legitimacy and to resource transfer. Further contributions to the literature on institutional theory, legitimacy, social entrepreneurship, and inter-organizational relationships are identified. (shrink)

Emotional responses to fiction are part of our experience with art and media. Some of these responses (“fictional emotions”) seem to be directed towards fictional entities—entities that we believe do not exist. Some philosophers argue that fictional emotions differ in nature from other emotional responses. (cf. Walton in J Philos 75(1):5–27, 1978, Mimesis as make-believe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1990, Walton, in: Hjort, Laver (ed.) Emotion and the arts, Oxford University, New York, 1997; Currie in The nature of fiction, Cambridge (...) University Press, Cambridge, 1990; Stecker in Br J Aesthet 51(3):295–308, 2011) The claim is supposed to be supported among others by ‘the argument from action.’ In contrast to genuine emotions, proponents of this argument claim, fictional emotions do not motivate their bearers to act. (cf. Yanal in Paradoxes of emotion and fiction, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, 1999; Lamarque in Br J Aesthet 21(4):291–304, 1981; Carroll in The philosophy of horror: or, paradoxes of the heart, Routledge, London, 1990; Currie 1990; Walton 1978, 1990; Suits in Pac Philos Q 87(3):369–386, 2006; Friend, in: Kind (ed.) The Routledge handbook of philosophy of imagination, Routledge, New York, 2016) This claim grounds in what may appear to be an obvious fact: that viewers and readers of are not led to act by their fictional emotions. It is certainly true that viewers and readers of fiction do not form intentions to perform actions directed towards fictional entities. In contrast to the proponents of the argument from action, I will argue that the lack of any such intentions can be explained only with reference to intending’s doxastic conditions, conditions that are unsatisfied in the fictional scenario. Decisively, this explanation does not refer to the motivational force of the agent’s emotions; indeed, it doesn’t refer to emotions at all. Thus, the lack of intentions to perform actions directed towards fictional objects provides no support for the claim that fictional emotions are no genuine emotions. (shrink)

There is a widespread intuition that readers’ empathy with fictional characters can help to understand certain works of literature. In a nutshell, the argument.

What are the resources and needs, the strengths and the vulnerabilities of patients, of society, or of nature? How do we evaluate the societal potential of scientific discovery? It is fairly well assured that we are influencing the terms of existence of many inhabitants of this planet, from flora to fauna to humans. Moreover, history has shown that while technologies can be used neutrally, they can be (and have been) used to the great benefit – or the great detriment – (...) of human life and the fate of the world as a whole. How various types of knowledge and technological ability will be deployed is up to us, individually and collectively. How such information and ability should be deployed, and for what reasons, are questions at the core of bioethical inquiry. These are the "expanding horizons in bioethics" to which this volume refers. This volume is comprised of fourteen essays. It is a rare gathering of scholarly opinion, featuring well-known experts from a diversity of disciplines. The topics addressed are of immediate concern to the public. The essays ask questions about human nature, genetic technologies, reproductive rights, human subjects research, and environmental issues – all in provocative and challenging new ways. Yet the themes that emerge throughout the volume are of enduring interest to anyone concerned about the interactions of scientific development, ethics, and society. This volume is of interest to students and teachers of bioethics and related topics, as well as to professionals working in these disciplines. (shrink)

Practical Truth is Mentioned Only Once in Aristotle’s entire corpus.1 However, this one mention shows practical truth to be central to the development of Aristotle’s conception of practical reason: because practical truth is a distinct type of truth, he claims, practical reason has its own unique function of being concerned with practical truth, and this unique function makes practical reason distinct from both theoretical and technical reason. Unfortunately, commentators of the Nicomachean Ethics2 rarely discuss practical truth, and when they do, (...) their interpretations fail to preserve the importance of this idea for Aristotle’s theory as a whole. Some commentators, like Sarah Broadie, prefer to understand .. (shrink)

Svetost vašega življenja in vaša gorečnost za svete učenosti sta me tako ganili, da sem vam napisal nekaj o vzgoji krščanskih žena, zelo pomembni temi, ki pa je vendarle do sedaj med vso raznoliko množico učenjakov in pisateljev ni še nihče obravnaval. Kaj je namreč enako nujno kakor duhovno oblikovanje teh, ki so v vsakem življenjskem položaju naše nerazdružljive družice? Med dobrimi je naklonjenost trdna, med slabimi pa ni dolgotrajna.

Zusammenfassung Obwohl sich Männer im Allgemeinen stärker für Fußball interessieren als Frauen, verfolgen Frauen die Spiele bei Fußballgroßereignissen wie Welt- oder Europameisterschaften mittlerweile genauso begeistert wie Männer. Was aber sind die Gründe für die Fußballrezeption bei Frauen und Männern? Diese explorative Studie untersucht die Intensität und den Verlauf von Rezeptionsmotiven während der Fußballeuropameisterschaft 2012 anhand von 904 Teilnehmerinnen einer Online-Befragung und analysiert dabei Unterschiede zwischen Männern und Frauen. Es lassen sich die vier Rezeptionsmotivfaktoren Mitfiebern, Information, Neugier auf Fußballteams und Erwartetes (...) Konfliktpotenfial ermitteln. Im Turnierverlauf bleiben die Intensität dieser Motive konstant, jedoch zeigen sich bedeutsame Unterschiede zwischen Männern und Frauen, selbst bei gleich starkem Fußballinteresse. (shrink)

In this introduction, the meaning and relevance of the study of De iure praedae, as one of the juvenilia of Grotius, is discussed and the contending approaches are described. A survey of the volume is provided.