Corporate governance scholarship focuses on executive malfeasance, specifically its antecedents and consequences. Academic efforts primarily focus on prevention while practitioners are often left to hold firms and executives (including directors) accountable through a variety of sanctions. Even so, executive malfea­sance still occurs even in the face of the vast resources used to monitor, control, and penalize firms and executives. In this paper, we posit equity markets do not adequately penalize firms for inaccurate earnings reports. Using a sample of 129 firms (...) identified by the U.S. General Accounting Office for reporting fraudulent earnings in 10K filings, we found support for our assertion. Consequently, the one party who may benefit but escape accountability is firm shareholders. Moreover, we find little empirical evidence that the subset of firms sanctioned by the SEC is penalized more heavily than the full sample by markets at the time they report and correct their 10K filings. Our results raise serious questions whether such mana­gerial opportunism can be eradicated given the apparent lack of consequences in equity markets for investors. We also question whether the SEC is able to discern between fraud and error in financial reporting and its implications. (shrink)

For readers looking for insights into key issues linking current Eastern and Western views on the arts, aesthetics, and philosophy, Unsettled Boundaries offers fresh and insightful perspectives on current issues as seen by leading Chinese and Western scholars. Represented in the volume are previously unpublished essays of Nöel Carroll, Garry Hagberg, Richard Shusterman, and Jason Wirth alongside writings of Chinese peers Gao Jianping, Peng Feng, Liu Yuedi, Wang Chunchen and Cheng Xiangzhan. The essays in this volume draw attention to evolving (...) cultural and philosophical connections linking the cultures of East and West, while taking note of important differences in the respective cultures. These connections draw upon both traditional Confucian ideas and Chinese Marxist-Leninist aesthetics as well as western pragmatism, somaesthetics, and Wittgenstein-based analytic philosophy. Alongside these philosophical currents, are reflections on issues linking globalization to contemporary Balinese, Chinese, and Japanese arts, by Curtis Carter, Stephen Davies, Garry Hagberg, and Mary Wiseman. (shrink)

This chapter treats in roughly chronological order ten Lutheran theologians other than Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, who were examined in the previous chapter. All of these figures can be discussed in relation to their reception of Søren Kierkegaard's writings, even though the level of appropriation of Kierkegaard varies significantly. They include German national Lutheran theologians Karl Holl, Friedrich Gogarten, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch, Scandinavian Lutheran theologians Anders Nygren, Knud Løgstrup, Regin Prenter, and Gustaf Wingren, and contemporary German Lutheran (...) theologians Wolfhart Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel. The chapter attempts to identify distinctive characteristics of each thinker and their connections to Kierkegaard. (shrink)

The second volume of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion emphasizes the pulsating particularities that distinguish the religions of history from one another. This volume discloses Hegel’s philosophical theology to be an open system whose concepts, as Jon Stewart points out, are no mere abstractions but principles concretely instantiated in the real world. This article first reviews key analytical notions used in investigating religions, with the notion of freedom being the most important. Next are examined two models of the (...) God-world relation that have gained significant attention in the secondary literature on Hegel: pantheism, which affirms God as the substantial power in all things, and panentheism, which affirms all things as being in God. The essay’s final portion turns to a third model of the God-world relation, pantransentheism, which affirms that all things are being transformed in God. There I offer a very abbreviated gesture towards a Hegelian pantransentheism. (shrink)

This study expands the application of deonance theory into organizations’ upper echelons by examining how CEOs imprinted with a sense of duty can influence managerial decision-making. We hypothesize an imprint of bounded autonomy, an ought-force that constrains their decision-making and understanding of behavioral freedom, influences duty-bound CEOs to self-report errors in past financial reporting. We test deonance theory propositions of instrumentality for behavioral expansion, namely loss avoidance and gain attainment, related to institutional ownership concentration and CEO equity ownership. We use (...) CEOs that are graduates of U.S. service academies as a proxy for duty-bound executives and find firms they lead are more likely to issue a financial restatement to correct a previous reporting error. This finding is robust to alternate explanations such as being error-prone, earnings management, auditor oversight, and risk behaviors. We also find evidence that deonance may be subject to behavioral expansion. The likelihood of issuing a restatement decreases as institutional ownership concentration and CEO equity ownership increases. This study shows imprinted deonance within the C-suite influences important organizational outcomes. (shrink)

This article examines three early writings of Hans L. Martensen, Søren Kierkegaard’s teacher and the target of his criticisms. The writings focus respectively on self-consciousness, mysticism, and freedom. They each make important claims about religion, and together they disclose the young Martensen’s systematic understanding of the epistemological, mystical, and moral-ethical dimensions of human experience as shaped by the representations of Christian faith and life. The analysis reveals an agile thinker, whose creative philosophical and theological ideas are the product of imaginative (...) speculation growing out of passionate religiosity. Some connections will be drawn from these essays to the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. (shrink)

This essay seeks to scrutinize Kierkegaard’s critical philosophical theology. The intent is to demonstrate how his religious thought, especially on God’s relation to the world and to the human being, can contribute to generating a cogent response to the challenges presented by our accelerating secular world. Apart from the narrative on the Dane’s passionate reflections, I employ two other narratives to facilitate this inquiry into Kierkegaard. The first of these facilitating narratives comes from highlighting the work on the concept of (...) resonance by the social theorist Hartmut Rosa. Rosa’s rich analysis of our contemporary situation provides a persuasive case for the accelerating pace of our secular world, the complex dynamics of alienation that are at play within it, and the need for social transformation that creates space for increasing resonance within personal and social relationships and structures. The second facilitating narrative centers on the notion of dancing in God, which I believe holds promise for effectively communicating moving, bodily, rhythmic, passionate, and responsive thoughts and actions concerning God’s engagement in our contemporary world. I hope to show that these three complementary discourses together provide a provocative religious discourse and vision that can prove helpful in addressing many of the challenges of our time. (shrink)

This chapter describes the Danish church, with the focus centered primarily on its life during the years 1835 to 1855 when Søren Kierkegaard was productive. The beginnings of the church up to 1835 are briskly examined, and then contributions of Jacob Peter Mynster, Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, and Hans Lassen Martensen are delineated. These three figures have been chosen because of their importance both for the Danish church and for Kierkegaard. The chapter ends with a few comments on some creative (...) thinkers who find in Kierkegaard's critique a resource for critically reforming the church so that it might more appropriately serve its intended purpose. At points in the chapter, the analysis utilizes the Kierkegaardian categories of the objective and the subjective. (shrink)

This volume examines the Kierkegaard-Martensen relationship, establishing ways in which the speculative theologian Martensen was a source for Kierkegaards thought. Kierkegaard's relationship with Martensen was multidimensional and volatile.

Peter Redpath is a distinguished historian of philosophy. He believes that the best way to acquire a philosophical education is through the study of philosophy’s history. Because he is convinced that ideas have consequences, he holds that the history of philosophy illuminates important events in history. Philosophy is a necessary condition for sound education, which, in turn, is a necessary condition for cultural and political leadership. Hence, the way educators and leaders shape culture reflects the effects of philosophy on culture. (...) In light of this background, it is possible to discern in Redpath’s account of the history of philosophy a corresponding philosophy of history. This emerges as he explains how philosophers have produced changes in thinking that have profound consequences for the culture at large. Some of these changes, many of them significant, have been positive, but others have been disastrous. Much of Redpath’s philosophy of history diagnoses what went wrong in the history of philosophy so as to indicate why modern culture suffers considerable disorder. The good news is that Redpath’s philosophy of history prescribes ways to correct Western Civilization’s current malaise. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “A Defence of Starmaking Constructivism: The Problem of Stuff” by Bin Liu. Abstract: I provide a brief account of key elements in Nelson Goodman’s starmaking constructivist philosophy and comment on Bin Liu’s defense of Goodman in the context of contemporary constructivist philosophy.

Inspired by the recovery of natural law and virtue ethics in recent ethical discourse, certain members of the American Maritain Association have written essays to stimulate this recovery further. Their efforts are assembled in this volume, Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good. Writing under the influence of Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon, they herein examine the requirements of a satisfactory natural law and virtue ethics, broadly understood as a moral philosophy giving primacy to character-formation and to the development of (...) individual and social habits necessary to perfect human life. The ethics herein envisioned is one that must first be grounded in a sound philosophy of the human person. (shrink)

If contemporary philosophers of science could transcend the skepticism that seems to have become obligatory in modern epistemologies, they could restore a comprehensive vision of science that would be a boon to science and scientific education. Science is not mere knowledge. Science is knowledge of something that is necessary and universal because its causes are understood. This was Aristotle’s conception of science (epistēmē), a conception which includes knowledge of substances and the first ontological principles of things. St. Thomas Aquinas refined (...) this understanding of science in a way that, perhaps surprisingly, has escaped the notice of many Thomists, especially the way St. Thomas understands physical substance to be a generic universal grounding necessary relations for some of its accidents. The recovery of Aristotle’s and St. Thomas’s conception of science would in no way threaten contemporary empirical science. Instead, it would explain how empirical science complements the ontology of science. (shrink)

Something has gone seriously wrong with contemporary philosophy. Philosophy today has become a catalogue of competing alternative theories, each striving for internal consistency, but unable to accomplish anything more. Somehow, however, philosophy matters. When philosophy ails, so do all the other disciplines. They all depend on philosophy to demarcate and justify the various orders of knowledge. If philosophy can offer no justification for truth claims, there are only the words of those who enjoy status, credentials and power. In Cartesian Nightmare, (...) Peter Redpath explains how culture has reached this stage of crisis. In the opening chapter, he presents, in chilling…. (shrink)

Many of the contributions offer personal reflections on those events and experiences that helped shape their response to the general issue of faith seeking understanding."--BOOK JACKET.

ABSTRACT:Corporate governance scholarship focuses on executive malfeasance, specifically its antecedents and consequences. Academic efforts primarily focus on prevention while practitioners are often left to hold firms and executives (including directors) accountable through a variety of sanctions. Even so, executive malfeasance still occurs even in the face of the vast resources used to monitor, control, and penalize firms and executives. In this paper, we posit equity markets do not adequately penalize firms for inaccurate earnings reports. Using a sample of 129 firms (...) identified by the U.S. General Accounting Office for reporting fraudulent earnings in 10K filings, we found support for our assertion. Consequently, the one party who may benefit but escape accountability is firm shareholders. Moreover, we find little empirical evidence that the subset of firms sanctioned by the SEC is penalized more heavily than the full sample by markets at the time they report and correct their 10K filings. Our results raise serious questions whether such managerial opportunism can be eradicated given the apparent lack of consequences in equity markets for investors. We also question whether the SEC is able to discern between fraud and error in financial reporting and its implications. (shrink)

The paper was read at a symposium in Eastern International Meeting of the American Academcy of Religion, Alfred, N.Y. April 16–17, 1993.

In this article, Carter tells the weaving tale of the globalization of art and the interplay between eastern and western contemporary art. Carter sketches out the history of contemporary art in China with a keen eye towards the interplay between Chinese artists and the various western influences over time, such as the 16th century Jesuit artists, Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, and Dada to name a few. This history is marked by a ubiquitous tension as Chinese artists incorporated western innovations into their (...) work, while also maintaining the poetic and literary foundation of Chinese art. Coupling that with the influence of the Cultural Revolution and Soviet realism on the Chinese are world, Carter discusses the tenuous boundaries upon which Chinese art has been and continues to be produced. After considering this history, Carter goes on to analyze the effect Chinese art has on the western art world--both how it shapes the western art world and how this globalization, in turn, shapes Chinese art. In navigating this boundary, Carter explains how Chinese artists find mediate appealing to a global audience while maintaining their Chinese roots. Carter concludes this essay by considering the economic success of Chinese art in the west and drawing attention to the negotiations still taking place today between local culture/global culture, tradition/innovation and authenticity/market appeal. (shrink)

Carlos Luna: Cuban Artist at the Crossroads is an essay appearing in the exhibition catalogue Pablo Picasso Ceramics, Carlos Luna Paintings for the exhibit of the same title installed at the Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale from October 2, 2008 through February 23, 2009.

The author reviews two symposia: 'The Video Arts: Demonstration and Discussion', The American Society for Aesthetics, New York City, 28 Oct. 1978, and 'The Aestheticians Look at Television', National Association of Education Broadcasters, Washington, D.C., 30 Oct. 1978. He also presents an evaluation of the current state of video art in terms of philosophical aesthetics. Furthermore, he attempts to make a clear distinction between television and video art. The differences cited include corporate studio efforts vs efforts of individual artists, commercial (...) vs artistic purpose and the substantial differences between production methods. Other issues considered are style, intimacy and narcissism. (shrink)

The focus here will be on the tension between architecture’s symbolic role and its function as a space to house and present art. ‘Symbolic’ refers both to a building as an aesthetic or sculptural form and secondly to its role in expressing civic identity. ‘Function’ refers to the intended purpose or practical use apart from its role as a form of art. As an art form, it serves important symbolic purposes; its practical purposes are linked to serving individual and community (...) functions requiring the delineation of space. In the present context of museum architecture, certain museum buildings are more likely to be seen as a sculptural object than as functioning buildings. The reasons for this development derive in part from unresolved issues pertaining to the respective roles of symbolic and practicalfunction as is seen in the analysis of architecture provided by G. W. F. Hegel, Rudolf Arnheim and Nelson Goodman. The vocabularies of contemporary architects such Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava do not follow the abstract geometrical patterns of Le Corbusier or Louis Kahn who envisioned a universal vocabulary of architectural forms derived from industrial technical forms that underscored Modernist conventions in architecture.By looking at this issue in the contexts provided by the theoretical discussions of Hegel, Arnheim and Goodman, it is possible to see more clearly the importance of examining with a critical eye the relative place of symbolism and function in museum architecture, and to question whether current museum practice has gone astray in allowing the sculptural symbolism to become the dominant element. When either its symbolic or its practical aspects are out of balance the result is sure to be unsatisfactory architecture. If the past is a reliable guide, it works best when the symbolic (sculptural) and the practical in architecture are worked out in harmony with each other. (shrink)